This morning, I was reading the Bible, intentionally looking for a Psalm to buoy me up and help me get through day 3 of the semester when I came across Psalm 25, which includes the cry:
"Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart have multiplied;
free me from my distress and take away all my sins."
The Psalmist's request of the Lord is that He will:for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart have multiplied;
free me from my distress and take away all my sins."
"guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my Savior,
and my HOPE is in you all day long."
for you are God my Savior,
and my HOPE is in you all day long."
That idea that I should hope in God all day long is profound - it's a reminder that hope should be a daily thing, not just a far-off longed-for hope, but a sustaining sense of God's presence. On her blog today, Annie included a passage from Thomas Merton's book, No Man is an Island,in which he talks about hope saying:
"Better than hoping for anything from the Lord, besides His love, let us place all our hope in His love itself. This hope is as sure as God Himself. It can never be confounded. It is more than a promise of its own fulfillment. It is an effect of the very love it hopes for. It seeks charity because it has already found charity. It seeks God knowing that it has already been found by Him. It travels to Heaven realizing obscurely that it has already arrived."
"Our hope is the pledge of a new heaven and a new earth, in which all things will be what they were meant to be. They will rise, together with us, in Christ. The beasts and the trees will one day share with us a new creation and we will see them as God sees them and know that they are very good.
"Meanwhile, if we embrace them for themselves, we discover both them and ourselves as evil. This is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil--disgust with the things we have misused and hatred of ourselves for misusing them.
"But the goodness of creation enters into the framework of holy hope. All created things proclaim God's fidelity to His promises, and urge us, for our sake and for their own, to deny ourselves and to live in hope and to look for the judgement and the general resurrection."
4 comments:
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
Ephesians 1:15-23
I had meant to put Merton on my blog a week ago, but I think God had his own timing!
In the above passage, I especially like the sentence saying that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened to know the hope to which He has called you and that Christ is the fulness of Him who fills everything in everyway.
I just learned that the wife of a former co-worker gave birth to a baby girl this morning, who they named Hope.
Now it's just getting spooky...
(sorry if this comment is a double, the last one disappeared!)
Jen,
Just wanted to let you know I'm missing you today. Thanks, as always, for sharing your heart, your joys and your doubts...Now, this is what it means to share one another burdens. Thanks for being such an example in this way! love you, want to go get some Indian food?=)
As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord is thinking about me right now. Ps 40:17a, NLT
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