New Lenses

Praying desperately for a full term baby...
Counting the days before you can escape danger whistling past your ear...
Offering to help an ailing parent who resents your help...
Agonizing over how to resolve conflicts in your church...
Begging God for relief at your spouse’s bedside...
Reminding your discouraged heart to look to the unseen...
Searching the scriptures in search of an encouraging word …

We all have crises where our expectations topple. Still, we reach for hope. We call out to God in desperation. And we pray for a good resolution.

A conflicted board meeting, tense operating room, slow grocery line, difficult conversation – all may be uncomfortable places where God offers us new lenses.

While we can’t always understand God’s ways in those times, experience discovers that God is trustworthy. Careful study and meditation in the scriptures give us new glasses -- and confidence in God’s goodness. Experience secures the glasses while we hold on to hope that only God can give. In our desert, we learn our Deliverer is trustworthy.

Just as God walked the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land, so our Deliverer walks us through pain and dashed expectations to a new geography replete with good provisions. Our precious Savior loves us and can work things together for good when we ask.

Journeying through the extremes of my desert, I rehearse God’s previous interventions. I'd encountered Christ's presence and was given new lenses to see my Deliverer making a way to accomplish His good promises.

My Lord will do it again. I just need to keep my glasses on, and hold tightly to His hand.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them (Isaiah 42:16, NIV).

See also Isaiah 55:9 and Romans 8:28.

Where do you get new lenses to more clearly see God's faithfulness and provisions? What scripture passages have shaped your view?

Recall a dark time when you encountered God's light. Spend 30 seconds in praise and thanksgiving for God's guidance, transformation, and presence.