Always Hope
Isaiah 40: 31
“But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
#alwayshope
Candle of Hope
Category: Because Of Bethlehem
Just Breathe
So hey, maybe it’s time to just take a step back out of the day and out of the hectic, to look at the big picture. Is it really all that and worth getting anxious about? Is it really?
Sometimes, we get a clearer view when we distance ourselves from the activities! Grab a cup of Christmas tea and breathe through the next moment. Sometimes if we step back just a bit, we can see the facade and maybe begin to remove some of the layers, just to lay it all out before ourselves and our Saviour, in these final days of our Advent season! What ploughs through, that needs not to be so aggressive? Panic? Fear? Worry? Failure to get done what you so planned to do? Christmas isn’t about what we do or how we do it or how much we can do? It’s about enjoying precious moments with family and friends through our imperfections. It’s about forgetting the deadlines, or at least placing them into proper perspective!
So hey! This busy day you’re in, it’s time for tea and refreshment. Take time to come before the Lord and Savior and in quiet moments just light a candle ~ just you and Him alone. Let His words be a Lamp to your feet and a light to your pathway of next steps. Ask for His counsel, act on His still, quiet voice, and begin to peel away those things that shouldn’t be there cluttering up your beautiful Advent season.
“Tis a time for warm delights, family traditions, memories, and making more. Don’t let the sweet moments of the season dissipate into busy, chaotic schedules and fast-paced rituals, just because! Don’t let them sink into fearful thoughts and panic moments of ‘What’s next.” Rather, find ‘calm’ in His presence! Delight in His words and a new strength in His power!
So go ahead light that candle just between you and our Lord and find peace, find Joy, and find a love so extraordinary it will soften the harshest moments of your fear, anxiety, chaos, and strife.
“Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted, but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40: 30 31
Unwrap God’s divine Gift of JOY in the quiet silences of the moment
The Star of the Season
So much happening in our world today with so much unrest, it seems as if our world is unraveling around us very quickly. As Advent season draws nearer our own worlds become full with much to do and as the days come and go, our panic buttons become on high alert.
So, here we are today, with busy minds on shopping, baking, and decorating, and yeah, our hearts go out to so many others in the midst of bombings, shootings, and catastrophe, and on it goes. Sometimes life just isn’t fair in the big scheme of things, and when we can’t do much to help we can hold them up in prayer, and be in prayer for the ones on the job day and night to restore destroyed lands and properties.
For those of us still blessed with a home, and the anticipation of a family gathering, Christmas always brings a busy time. It can bring so much to the table with our thoughts going in a million different directions and our hearts heavy for the losses of so many.
Yet in all that comes and goes, Christmas is still the same season of Hope and the same season of Joy, we just might have to search a little deeper into the heart and soul of us to remember to find a resurgence of the Hope that it brings.
So, today, with so much going on in our minds, we need to regroup and reset for this coming beautiful Advent season! Let’s reset for the season that rejoices in the birth of a divine, heavenly baby born into an earth world for a huge purpose! To deliver Hope to a world that unravels before our very eyes.
Advent? No matter what’s happening around us, it’s all about Him ~ The Christ Child, the Star of the season! His royalty, His divinity, His part man, part God side, who left the portals of Heaven to become flesh! Born to walk among us, feel the dusty earth beneath His feet, the hurt of rejection, the pain of sin, and the sting of death.
Take a time out to ponder His life as He lived it out in real-time, in real life, and for us. You and I and we and us. Yeah, forget the heaps of stuff on your plate and ponder Him, the Christ One. The divine baby, born in the stable to become the Christ Child, to become a man so human, yet so divine to walk among us! To become our Saviour and the Savior of the World. Oh, how beautiful He is to us not just at this season but all year, through the year!
Yet, perhaps our Advent season brings Him closer as our minds ponder Him more. So, let’s reset our thinking patterns, our mindsets, and our goals, and our purpose to focus on the Reason for our celebrations. Today just embrace His grace! Rest in Him! Rejoice in His mercy! Rejoice in His power to save one horrendous world that we find ourselves living in. Today! Rejoice in His unconditional love for the hurting and the fleeing! the lost and the ruined. The loved and the unlovely and the ones so desperately in need of Him and His tender touch!
Yeah, beautiful soul ~ Sit back and search your heart with “Time out” to reflect on His goodness at the beginning of a beautiful Advent season and remember where He brought you from and the golden threads He’s woven around you to bring you where you sit today.
So go ahead, get out your traditions packed in boxes and your fine, ornaments to grace the home with merry thoughts of Christmas and family and friends! Go for it! I love this time of year. Don’t you? Dig out the recipes for sweet treats and cookie exchange and bake up a storm because a fine celebration is about to begin! A celebration so rich and sweet with festivities that go so much deeper than decor and sweets and tinsel and lights and gifts! A celebration that goes beyond us and reaches to the King of Heaven who resides and lives in the life He’s given us ~ and still keeps giving and giving and giving!
Yeah, so before you begin the scurrying, “Reset” ~ grab a cup of tea, light a candle ~ you, yourself and you and reflect on the amazing season about, to begin with, the divine, Baby born in the manger ~ Our Saviour of the world!
“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
Isaiah 7:14
A Whisper Of Love’
Sometimes a whisper from Heaven to our souls is all we need to get us through. I love this verse and this promise from Isaiah don’t you?
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:” Isaiah 40:4
Such a glorious word of the prophecy of our Saviour’s coming to earth. A glorious story ~ A story with far-reaching impact. A story that reaches farther than just a fable on this old earth because its truth reaches into the hearts of men to seek and to save the lost and to bring salvation into this wretched, sin-sick world of just bad and all gone wrong! To bring healing into hearts shattered with pain and hope into the broken and anguished stories of our lives. Oh, beautiful soul, how lovely it is to celebrate His unconditional love for us even in our darkest of the night’s moments. Our Savior’s divine and royal birth, whispers from the heavens to our souls and reminds us clearly,
“I came to help you through all the hard times and to uphold you through all the horrific moments that each one must bear over the course of a lifetime. I didn’t send the pain, but I came to ease it and carry the burden of it. Give it to me and let me bear it, for its weight is heavy, and its anguish is too great for one as beautiful as you.”
The glory of the Lord was revealed on that night, long ago when His light illuminated the dark, to announce His birth to shepherds who kept watch over their flocks by night. It still shines brightly in our night to day. Our nights of anguish, sadness, loneliness, fear, hurt, rejection, unfairness, brokenness, and pain. Its hope shines brightly to bring us peace through it all and to lead us through to level ground!
Do you know Him through your sorrow? Can He share your burden at this Christmas time? Can He give you Hope for even this? Can He grant you a peace that goes beyond all understanding, for such a time as this? That’s what He does! I love how He does it!
“Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain:” Isaiah 40:4 “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.”
John 14:27
#SoulNoteToSelf #advent #Hope #Peace #loneliness, #Fear #Hurt #Rejection #Anquish #Pain #Night
Hope and Healing In Hard Places 