New Year - New Season

I have always loved the changing of seasons, spring to summer, summer to fall.  There is something about entering into a new season that brings a hint of hope.  This weekend at church a video played with inspirational quotes to set our hearts right for the New Year.  This one I had to look up and read again:

I love word pictures.  They cause me to pause and wonder for awhile.  I don't know that I fully understand this quote, but something about it makes me want to sit awhile and think on last year and consider 2016.  

It is as if January 1st is a switch waiting to be flipped.  Out with the old and in with the new.  I sometimes wish this were true of May 18 or October 23 or any other random day of the year when I desire a new beginning.  

This is a new season, 2016.  I feel like I have this big eraser to wipe off last year's disappointments and failures and I can write down fresh hopes for the tomorrows of this year. What will be written on the pages of this year, what voice will emerge?

As I linger a little longer over 2015, past those regrets, I see God.  He is in the funerals and in the weddings. He is in the sicknesses and in the good health. He is in the lean times and in the times of abundance. He has answered thousands of prayers. I see Him more clearly than the year before.

I want to embrace all that the Lord has planned for this coming year. I am guessing He has planned some hard times sprinkled in among the mundane days and happy moments. It is all for our good and for His glory.  So this year, 2016, I commit to Hosea 6:3:

Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. 

When life gets hard, instead of flailing about, I will choose to press on.  And not in the "spin your wheels to exhaustion" pressing on, but by leaning in closer to know the Lord in the midst of my circumstances. All else will be worthless, rubbish, meaningless unless this is first. 

When January 1, 2017 rolls around I will rejoice once again in seeing the Lord even more clearly.  As the NIV translation of Hosea 6:3 says, "as surely as the sun rises, He will appear".  This is my promise, He will not fail me.  Here is to great expectations and renewed hope for 2016!

The 40 Day Journey - Day 21 (Hope Finale)

I had one more hour with God today listening and asking Him to bring clarity to anything that I needed to understand about hope. (...for now)

I have been thinking about the ways I toss around words like mercy, hope, grace as if they are common words, trivial.  Last week when someone said to not lose hope to me, I really wanted to understand what that meant, it is not a cliche or shallow word. 

That was my motive in bringing this to the Lord and He has settled some truths in my heart about this. In the seeking is finding and this is what I found.

Hope is both a noun and a verb, it has a biblical definition and it has a Webster's Definition.  Hope has great depth of meaning in scripture.  It is connected with perseverance and joy.  Hope is eternal. ("But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 1 Cor. 13:13) Hope is what we received when the veil was torn and is our passage to God. (*bonus side note: passage as defined in Webster's is "a long, narrow space that connects one place to another", does this remind you of other scriptures?)

To wrap these thoughts up, God directed me to Ezekiel 37 today. I read about the vision of the Valley of Dry Bones.  You can read it too, but the Nancy shortened version is, God showed Ezekiel a valley of dry bones. He then said to tell them in verses 5-6, 

"Thus says the Lord God to these bones, 'Behold, I will cause breath to enter you that you may come to life...and you will know that I am the Lord.'"

God explains that the dry bones are the House of Israel and they say, "Our bones are dried up, and our hope has perished...." and then God makes a promise in verse 14:

"And I will put My Spirit within you, and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the LORD, have spoken and done it,"...

Did you see that sequence?  Israel's hope had perished and God promises to put His Spirit within them so they will have life!  And why does He do this?  That they may know God.  If we back up a chapter, Ezekiel 36:22 says, "...It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for My holy name..."

I feel like I have had a bipolar experience on this journey of untangling my ideas of hope.  I've swung from one end of deciding to never use the word "hope" unless I am speaking of Jesus and looking up dozens of verses to support this idea to a very simple explanation: Hope is Jesus. And He is enough. 

And I need not fret. If I do "lose" my hope, God is at the ready to breath life into these dead bones of mine and restore what was lost. And this is not for my sake, but for His holy name.  

I mentioned yesterday that we heard Jon Guerra in concert, one line from his song is, "I don't know what I don't know, but what I know is You and Your love and that is enough for me."

So I don't know everything there is to know about hope. And that is okay. I know Jesus and He is hope, and that is enough for me.

Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (Look Up) by Nicole Nordeman