a word of hope

I know that right now the world is anything but certain. The economy has thrown chaos into so many lives as it has ushered in lay offs, pay cuts, and other job worries. I don't know if anyone can claim to be unaffected by the uncertainty all around us, and the first thing that pops into my head when uncertainty looms is worry. My natural reaction is to begin thinking through all of the things that I have absolutely no control over in a vain attempt to come up with some contingency plan for whatever may happen.

As soon as the little cogs in my brain begin down this path, I know how silly it is. God is the only one with the future in His hand. He knows that things are not going from bad to good but from bad to worse, yet He still commands us not to worry, not to try and fix things, no matter how hard that is to try to keep from doing!

Faith is something that gets rusty quicker than I would like to admit, and I think it's precisely for that reason that God forces us to exercise it so much. But even though we must walk in faith without knowing what tomorrow holds, we do not walk in the darkness. God has given us His promises, and so even though we don't know what the future will bring with it, we walk in the light of His promises, knowing that whatever it is, He is there.

A few verses tucked away in Isaiah 45 have mean a lot to me over the past two years. They say, "I will go before you and level the mountains. I will smash down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron. And I will give you treasures hidden in the darkness, secret riches! I will do this so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, the one who calls you by name."

I love that! God goes before us, even through the uncertainty and troubles of life, and makes a path for us. We don't have to do our own heavy lifting, so to speak, because God does it for us! We just need to recognize His power to do it and let Him in to help. I also believe that the second part of the verse speaks to the treasures He gives us in the dark moments. Some of His deepest gifts and riches are given to us when we are in the dark seasons of our life. It is there that He meets us and gives us gifts that are indescribable.

I need that promise today, and my guess is that many of you might as well. Things are not easy, but God is here! He is the one who calls us each by name, caring more for each of us than we have the ability to comprehend. Even with a bad economy, tenuous world politics, and the things we are each facing individually, God does not change. His promise in Isaiah is true and real, a solid piece of hope in a world that is so uncertain!