An Unexpected Journey

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 My bible gateway verse of the day.  That word Hope just grabs me.  I know what it is to feel that I am dangling by such a small thread of hope… my whole existence feeling as if it could come crashing down at any minute.  But the God I know is the God of Hope.  It is part of His goodness.  He knows that we will walk through difficulty but that hope is a lifeline and it comes by trusting Him through the power of the Holy Spirit. I watched a cartoon this weekend that wrecked me.  Yep.  You read that right.  There is a series called Torchlighters of amazing videos that retell the real life stories of people who are heroes of the faith in cartoon form.  The girls and I watched the story of Gladys Alyward, a young woman who was rejected by a missionary society in the early 1900’s and to...

I am sitting in my house looking out at a foggy world.  White mist blankets everything I can see, obscuring the details and leaving the imagination to fill in the blanks.  And sometimes life feels like this.  We can see an outline but clarity may escape us.  Propped up in the middle of my double window is a piece of wood with the words “It is well with my soul” engraved on the attached metal.   And it seems an oxymoron with that fuzzy world peering in through the windows behind the art.  The words are clear and bright and beautiful.  The view surrounding them is so withering and damp and uninviting.  There are days when life is just that way precisely, but there  are words that can be an anchor.  A centerpiece of stability for our hearts and minds.  His words.  Words of promise that we can hang everything on.  He doesn’t guarantee us that life will always go smoothly.  In fact, He promises us that in this world ...