If you have followed me for any amount of time, you might know that I love sharing my Bible readings and insights. Today of course is another of those. And I also love sharing tips about how to expand your thoughts towards God.
Ecclesiastes 3: 11 is a very often quoted verse from the scriptures. Most people know the first part, “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” But many do not know the middle section, “He has put eternity in their hearts…” and I venture that some have no idea the last part of the verse is in the same verse as the beautiful quote, Here it is “…except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” Wow, making everything beautiful is God’s mysterious work and no one has that understanding. There is that moment when the caterpillar becomes the butterfly, when is that exact moment?
God has put eternity in our hearts. Today my dear little cousin is going through yet another colon surgery. The surgeries that he has had are going into the second set of digits on the hands. I cannot imagine the thoughts and fears that he has experienced in his young life. Yet, God has worked eternity into his heart and he asked to be baptized this past Sunday before the upcoming surgery. Such blessed assurance the Lord is working out in his life and those who know him. surely, we cannot find out the work that God is doing from beginning to end.
So today as the beginning of a new year dawns, I wonder at all those who celebrate with hope and joy what God will work in others lives around me. Just like you, the past year held so many tragic images, I want to focus on the beauty that God brought to me.
While my physical eyesight continues to to fail me, and I wonder why things look so blurry, I will gain a better vision of a clear future in eternity. With those who have gone before me, I can hope for our renewed gatherings in glory. The holidays have changed so much without the visits of those whom we held dear. Now heaven is feeling more and more like the “hope of home” than it ever has before. It is no wonder that the older one becomes, the more homesick we are. It is easier for me to imagine my father’s clear vision restored in glory than it is for me to imagine the garden in it’s July prime this next summer. (It’s the weeds that do me in.)
This year in its beginning, I choose hope. The other day as I tried to clean out the library, I asked for my husband’s help. It did not go really well well, and my herbage became nearly worth the little garbage pail in the room. Finally, I asked him to leave, and I would finish the clean up myself. Yes, he was helpful at reading the titles and such, but that task was done, and now it was time to find a new home for the menagerie of items displaced. I did get it done in case you want to know. But it was a new beginning to me, having help with a task that I have done by myself for the past thirty plus years.
And so the beginning of the year has arrived with its new beginnings and its hope for positive endings, like a clean room that one can breathe in once again. Hope is often hard to grasp. The Bible says that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” Hope then can be defined as the expectation of a future outcome that drives one to act upon its believed outcome. How does one translate hope into action. Faith that is not active is not full of hope.
The most common simplified version of Hebrews 11:! “ We walk by faith, not by sight.” Yet Faith does have sight! The vision or dream of what will be is what keeps the faithful moving forward towards the prize or the high calling of Christ. Yes HOPE is the ability to see what is not there. The dreamers capacity is HOPE!
From the beginning of this year, I do not know how its end will be. There are so many hopes and dreams. Like the garden of bulbs planted in the fall that one hopes for in the spring, I must decide to do the work of dividing the soil and placing the dead looking object into the ground. Seed planting is how my brain works. Now I must translate the hopeful bulb garden into everyday life and keep “walking by faith.”