Annie
Scriptures: Psalm 63 Psalm 27 John 14,15, 16, 17 Isaiah 49:15-16
How deep is the Love of the Father for us? If we could measure His Love, then He wouldn’t be the limitless, immeasurable God that He is. We go through our days upheld by His Love, even when we are unaware of Him, He is still working on our behalf, holding His Kingdom in perfect harmony, keeping us close to His Heart.
At the beginning of this year the very fact that it is 2020 made many around the world comment on “perfect vision” being 2020 vision. To be honest, looking around right now, this world is very, very far from what our perception of “perfect” is. There is so much grief, so much heartache. People everywhere are suffering loss and grieving for that loss. It may not be death, the loss of a loved one, but the reality of having restrictions on our freedom of movement, not being able to hug our family and friends, realising that our source of income is at risk, causes our hearts and souls to grieve in ways we may never have experienced before.
When we are in the middle of these dark times, when we feel as if we are drowning in the deepest of oceans, know this – our God never leaves us, whatever we are going through, He is with us. Corrie Ten Boom is quoted as saying “There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still”. For those who don’t know her story, she was part of a Dutch Christian family who hid Jews from the Nazis during the second World War, and was arrested and taken to Ravensbruck Death Camp with her sister. Corrie survived the horrors of this pit of grief and despair by a miraculous “administration error” after her sister had died, and she then spent her life declaring how God had never left her for all of this awful time.
God tells us through Isaiah that He will never forget His children, we are “engraved on the palms of His hands”. When Christ went to Calvary and took the penalty of sin for us, He also took every sorrow, every grief into Himself, He carried it all for only one reason. His choice to pay this debt on our behalf is the only way out of grief, sorrow, loneliness, heartache and desperation that is an intrinsic part of living a life separated from God.
Outside of God there is no lasting peace, no real hope. The world stumbles from one crisis to another and humanity gets dragged into the depths of despair when the corruption, the duplicity and the greed becomes so obvious to all, the way that it is in these times.
Within God there is life, there is joy, there is hope despite what the world is shouting at us. Christ came to be our Hope, to bring us Life. He told us that no-one could ever take our Joy from us, because He is that Joy, not a feeling or an emotion, but the Person of the Living Christ. When we turn to God in humility and repentance, accepting His Salvation that He paid His life to bring us, we can know the depths of the Father’s Love that will sustain and uplift us during whatever grief and sorrow the world throws at us.
We live, for now, surrounded by a fallen world, but we don’t have to live in the effects of that world. God is beside, behind, within and around us wherever we go, whatever we are suffering. Grief, for now, is a reality, a part of what living on earth entails, yet we never go through it alone. Our God will turn our mourning into dancing, He will restore the years that the locust has eaten, He will dry our tears and He will, always, keep us safe in His arms.
Prayer: Abba Father, we give You our thanks and praise for always being right here, always holding us tight, always being our comfort and our refuge.