Looking to Him

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me." (Isaiah 49:15-16, NIV)

  In all of us there is a struggle to know things, to retain experiences and yet peer into the future.  We struggle to ascertain all the facets that make up the way we understand life.  Why do certain things happen to us and why or how are they good or bad? Why do some goals become reality and others remain impossible to attain despite our best efforts?  There is sense in most humans, as we live, that we expect mostly good things and times in our lives.  Non-religious people generally don’t expect negative things to come their way and Christian people expect that somehow inherent in God’s blessing of their lives is an indirect promise to exclude them from bad things and suffering. 

    When people are healthy, have job security and their marriage and family are generally warmly interacting in loving ways, we assume this will be our normal and everyday pattern in our lives.  Sure there are little inconveniences and some stressful times but generally we live expecting little that is earth shattering or terrible to come our way. If there are some shocking upheavals, pending disasters or even tragic losses ahead in our lives, we think we would like to know about them before they were to happen.  On the other side of the spectrum are our anxieties over the situations we tend to imagine as of much greater significance than they actually are. The reality is that we as humans aren’t that great handling the future whether it is real or imagined and although humans can rise up to deal with most occasions of difficulties, we struggle from time to time understanding them.

    The truth remains … we cannot see into the future, we cannot understand the whys of painful occurrences nor do we really know what we really can handle until the difficulty is directly in our path.  As we enter a new year, we at times try to come up with a few resolutions about changing our lifestyles patterns or setting new goals for the coming year. Healthy lifestyle changes, giving up non-essential things, setting new priorities in our lives are good things and it is a good thing to strive to be better and live in healthier ways in any New Year. These are important but the growing in our faith and becoming more like Christ in all our ways and showing His love to all those around us should be our greatest desire.

     Still beyond resolutions is the reality that although we all “see in a mirror dimly” (1Corinthains 13:12) and this is little shaky at times.  Beyond our human condition is the rock solid security of our Shepherd’s love.  In that love we know we are in “etched in God’s palm” (Isaiah 49:16), “redeemed and called by name” (Isaiah 43:1) and “blessed Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). There are literally hundreds of other promises from our God, who is “faithful in all His words and kind in all His works” (Psalm 145:13).   May we see these promises in a living way and cry out to Him when we cannot understand what we are facing (Psalm 142) knowing that “His love endures forever” (Psalm 118).  That is not an iffy New Year’s resolution but an eternal fact. Trust in Him in the new year and trust in Him all your days.

Suggested Reading ... Isaiah 49