Month: December 2021

So hey you there, with a heavy heart and hard circumstances beating down your door, there is blessing there, because the joy of the Lord alone, is our strength and in His presence alone, is joy beyond our comprehension. It sounds cliche, I know, to say there’s blessing tucked away in the hard places, but the Apostle Peter knew that blessing, like ‘treasures’, lay hidden in trials as he wrote to encourage the persecuted Christians in his day! Still today, beautiful one, his words echo through to us, right here, right now, in this season of celebration of our Lord’s birth, piercing through our dark days, hard times, and rejection.

This season of holly, jolly? It’s not about comfort, good things, and happiness, and although the world places high emphasis on such things, It’s not about that! It’s about a sense of deep, inner peace in our Saviour’s presence and trust and contentment in all things that He works in our waiting. It’s focusing on His presence in us that brings trust to our hearts and minds to erase the depth of the struggle, the intense fear, and the painful aloneness and replace it with a joy unspeakable. 

1 Peter 1:7-9
“That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.”
#Adventofjoy

In the early morning hours when the morning seems still very night and very dark, I open the patio doors to catch a glimpse of the weather. The summer air greets me with a warm, pleasant, aromatic aura and even though still dark, it can feel kinda peaceful and safe. Winter, though is a different story with a different dark, hanging over a chill in the air and a rather cold greeting! Yeah, it’s in the winter, I love to close the doors tight to shut it out and come back into the warmth and sparkle of the tree lights gracing our Advent season! There’s just something about light in the dark isn’t there? And something about peace and ‘safe’ in the light? What do we do though, when life itself is the dark, and life itself greets us with that cold shoulder, yet there are no doors to close tight to shut it out? No visible lights in sight just because ‘life’ happens to make us feel like a prisoner behind its unfair walls of pain, remorse, hurt, broken, and disappointment? Yeah, what then when the world’s gone out, the lights go out, and there’s no peace and there you are alone in your thoughts? Friends, we need to seek the Light of the miracle that happened in Bethlehem. If we walk in our Savior’s Light, He brings peace into the cold, scary night of life! Thing is, no matter then, what’s on the doorstep when we turn our face and our thoughts toward His Light, His sweet peace greets us! A five-star plus miracle happened that night in the dark night of Bethlehem for you and me and we and us. I love how it happened in the dark, don’t you? Births can happen at any time of day but our Prince of Peace and the Light of Our World, came at night, into a rude stable and a crude manager, and was announced with a bright star of light! It seems a blessed miracle met Mary and Joseph there that night, in the dark, on the stable floor surrounded by lowly animals; a Savior, a Peace Giver, a Deliverer, and a Redeemer. Both theirs and ours for such a time as this.

The dark! The night; our miracles happen there in those places. So, for now, today, If you close the doors on that cold shoulder of life, to seek the Star of Bethlehem, you just might find new hope in your heart has come. Your miracle awaits in His peace! Trust Him for it. Isaiah 32: 16- 18

“The Lord’s justice will dwell in the desert, His righteousness lives in the fertile field. The fruit of that righteousness will be peace; its effect will be quietness and confidence forever. My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.”

#Advent#Peace