We just celebrated Children’s Sunday. I asked, “What’s the best part of having children?”
Years ago, back when our first child was a wee tyke, this question was asked in adult Sunday School. My husband answered, “You get to play with their toys.”
Blessings, indeed!
I really like how the Easy-to-Read Bible words Psalm 39 (verses 6-8):
Our life is like an image in a mirror.
We rush through life collecting things,
but we don’t know who will get them after we die.
So, Lord, what hope do I have?
You are my hope!
Save me from the bad things I did.
Don’t let me be treated like a fool.
No fooling. God is our hope!
What hope rests close to your heart?
We hope for good weather, enough money, a safe trip, the cure for what ails us, well-behaved children, a better job. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
But God exists outside of time. For him, the end is as the beginning, and a thousand years as a single day. From his point of view, good weather and more money don’t mean much.
Joshua 3:15-16 (NIV)
Now the Jordan is at flood stage all during harvest. Yet as soon as the priests who carried the ark reached the Jordan and their feet touched the water’s edge, the water from upstream stopped flowing. It piled up in a heap a great distance away.
Must have been scary, with the river at flood stage. Did the priests look at each other in fear, thinking “We’re all gonna drown.”
If the water piled up before they walked into the river, it wouldn’t be a step of faith.
What about you? Do you walk in fear or in faith?
Numbers 13:33 (NIV)
We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.
The spies were afraid of the people they saw in the Promised Land. That fear kept the Israelites in the desert for 40 years.
Fear can keep us in a desert of our own making, away from God’s best. Feeling like grasshoppers.
“We fear men so much,
because we fear God so little.”
William Gurnall (1617-1679)
A Puritan Golden Treasury
Last week, at the request of a reader, we looked at pain. This week’s topic was raised by another reader: FEAR. What do you fear?
Isaiah 41:10 (ESV)
Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God.
I have a big burly friend. With him beside me, I wouldn’t be afraid in a dark alley.
Picture this: the Lord of the universe is always at your side–no one stronger, no one wiser.
Feeling safe?
