In the classic children’s story Anne of Green Gables, the heroine poetically claims that “tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it.

Each day does offer a clean start, but our problems don’t disappear like nightmares in the morning.  Growing up my Mom always reminded us that very few decisions are fatal.  Many have consequences, some hurt, but very few things are unfixable.

Have you ever wished you could start over? In “Beginning Again” Sara Preston shares the story of how she changed her life. Surprisingly, the day she put her kids in the car and drove away from her husband was not the day that changed everything.  That day came much later.  Sara thought her story was over, but it was just beginning.  Read Sara’s story.

What does your story look like? Do you ever wish you could wipe the page clean and start over?  If you feel trapped, try our Life Lesson “Finding Freedom”.  You’ll be matched with a coach who will work through your answers with you as you learn.

“I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord” Psalm 27:13

Across from the mail boxes in my townhouse complex is a house adorned with flowers. As I fetch my mail I stop to admire the floral work of art my friend Yvonne has created. But it wasn’t always so, she told me.

Seven years ago, the doctor predicted that Yvonne had only months to live. Hearing the doctor’s prognosis, Yvonne lost all interest in gardening.

“What’s the point,” she thought. I won’t be here to see it anyway. But sitting around moping didn’t suit her either.

One day she had a serious talk with herself. “I was terminal when I was born so what’s new?” she said. “Only God knows the exact time of my death but until then I’m going to live each day with enthusiasm. After all I serve a God of hope, not despair.”

Yvonne went outside and planted some tulip bulbs. Soon it was time to plant flowers into hanging baskets and clay pots and flower beds. Amazingly, Yvonne began to feel much better.

“Planting is a faith-filled action,” she told me. “You have to have faith that the little seed or fragile plant will grow and flourish under your care. That kind of active faith spilled over into my health concerns as well. I knew that God was in control of my life and all would be well. Sure, I might not see my flowers bloom come spring but it was okay. Someone else would be sure to enjoy them.”

And for seven more years, we neighbors have enjoyed the fruit of Yvonne’s labors. Hanging baskets overflowing with petunias and impatiens of every hue and window boxes brimming with bright red geraniums and purple heliotrope adorn her house. Her flower beds are a radiant display of carpet roses, lilies, lobelia, alyssum, phlox and many other flowers. Birds scratch for seeds in two feeders. A slight breeze plays on the chimes.

Although Yvonne’s health is in decline once more, she keeps going. “Nothing will ward off that helpless, ‘I’m-a-victim’ feeling as some positive faith-filled action,” she says.

Lord, help me to rise to my challenges with hopeful actions fueled by your eternal hope. Amen.

Question: Are you dealing with a difficult challenge in your own life? How does God continue to encourage you despite challenging circumstances?

About this Author: Helen Grace Lescheid

He is unaware of my presence. His eyes are closed, the patterned quilt above him faintly rising and falling. The small clock radio at his bedside blares an old country station, but the silence is overwhelming. Grandchildren innocently look out from photographs haphazardly arranged on the desk. A wooden frame holds a younger, stronger version of the man laying in the bed.

He is contentedly unaware of this. And so I sit in a corner of his room, waiting for the possibility that he’ll wake up and need someone.

Here I am. For the possibility.

I am in a long term facility where my grandfather lives out his last few days. He sleeps much of the day, and the doctors haven’t given him much time to live. It could be tomorrow, it could be next week. But it will be soon. And here in these slow-moving days, as silence is interrupted only by footsteps in the hall, I get to thinking: “Could the world be a better place?”

Stuck between free hugs and a hard place

We all want the world around us to change for the better. Sometimes our desire for change comes close to breaking our hearts. We see brokenness in our world and we cry out for change. We see babies dying, teenagers losing hope, injustice and unfairness. We desperately want change. The problem is, we don’t know where to begin.

When it comes to changing the world there is an ongoing skirmish in the dusty desert of my soul. I have lived in the camp of the Eternal Optimist, where the days are filled with sunshine and passionate movements. They preach “Change!” from the rooftops, and generally talk to you as though the world can change in this moment. They lead the conversation, full of life and vigor and the pursuit of change in the midst of a difficult and busy world.

If they’re really passionate, the words spill out of them like an ocean tide on too much caffeine. The change is sweeping, all-encompassing and it will happen right now. The world can be better, will be better and is going to be better because of you and me. It comes across like a late-night infomercial, the seller is loud and the product is cheap. But don’t worry, just embrace it and follow, right?

I recently came across three Eternal Optimists while shopping at the mall. They were dressed in dark clothing (for irony, I think), and they carried a sign that proclaimed, “FREE HUGS!” In my fascination, I watched as they walked past people, around people. Each time, there were no hugs, free or otherwise. In fact, there was a general avoidance of the dark-clothed happy people offering their poisonous free hugs. As a bystander, I found it both sadly ironic and darkly funny.

Learning to step

The problem with change is that it’s impossible to measure. When change is called for we want sweeping changes, dramatic changes that will alter the course of history. We don’t like our government, we elect a new one. When we want change in our health, we buy a workout program, or a gym membership.  We start working toward that new goal with all of our efforts. We like the sweeping dramatic results. Anything less seems, well, not enough.

My four year old daughter appreciates change better than I do. One afternoon, after picking her up at pre-school, I asked how her day went. She looked at me, and then her face brightened and her grin spread across her face and she proclaimed, “Daddy, I got invited to A BIRTHDAY PARTY!” The change in her was enormous. Our family has moved around a lot so she hasn’t had much opportunity to make friends.  Here she was, at the end of her day, beaming from the kindness of one of her friends asking her if she wanted to come to his birthday party. A small step of kindness – an enormous impact on my daughter. This is something beautiful.

Stepping out

And so here I sit, an agent of change. I think that perhaps change is less about history and headlines and more about each day’s countless opportunities to step out in kindness. It’s less on our own desire to create change and more about realizing that change can happen right in front of us. I sit, while my grandfather lives out his last days, unaware if I am his grandson, or a doctor, or an old fishing buddy from years ago.

But then grandpa shifts in his bed. The blanket falls to the floor and he’s cold. I can see his discomfort, how he moves his legs in the attempt to warm himself. I get up, step toward the bed, and move the blankets just enough to cover his legs.

I step.

I make change.  And the world changes with me.

Upcoming online chats: Join us for daily online chats! One of our features will be “How do you determine whether and where to give your resources to help others?” on March 26 at 12:15 pm EST. Please join us to discuss how to take a step and make a change!

Feeling lonely and hopeless? We’re here. Talk to us.

“But the angel said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to give him the name John’” (Luke 1:13, NIV).

I love the story of Zacharias and Elizabeth.  It is a story of hope; a powerful story revealing that our God is One who listens to our hearts cries and hears our prayers.

Recently, I had been reading through the story of John the Baptist’s conception and Christ’s birth in the gospel of Luke.

When the angel of the Lord came to Zacharias he said, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard”.  Zacharias and Elizabeth were old in age and remained barren.  As we know, in those days it was a shame to be barren.  When I read this story however, I began to wonder what it was truly like for Zacharias and Elizabeth.  What was it like to live knowing within themselves that they probably would never conceive, (unless it was a miracle) only for this moment to occur?

I began to imagine the years that Elizabeth and Zacharias spend in tumultuous prayer, weeping before God, and grieving within their hearts over their barrenness.  I could almost hear their cry and see their faces turn numb over the years. Their hearts must have broken from grief and sorrow.  I’m sure they questioned and doubted where their God was in this seemingly “unanswered prayer”.  I thought about how they might have questioned God, but still remained faithful to Him and His Commandments.

And all the while, I could almost hear the voice of God calling from Heaven saying, “Just wait your time is coming!  You have no idea what I have in store for you. You don’t even have a clue of what I am about to bless you with.  Please wait and hold on a little longer!  Keep hoping, and even if you lose hope, I have still heard because I am God.  I am the One who hears the needs and the desires of my people.  And I have a purpose in all of this.  If you just wait, it will come to pass, and you will have what you desire.”

In truth, Zacharias and Elizabeth had no idea the plan that God had for them.  For years they had to trust God and stand on His faithfulness.  Eventually, out of Elizabeth’s womb would come the greatest Prophet of Old, paving the way for the Messiah, Jesus Christ Himself!

Here’s the thing:  God is in the business of resurrecting our dreams!  He longs for those things that He has placed inside of you to be accomplished.  And even when we lose hope, our prayers are never ever lost, rather they are heard by God, and God remembers them.

I want to encourage those of you who have prayed, and have longed for things to come to pass.   God hears your prayers and your cries!  He knows your hearts’ desires.  And, maybe, just maybe, He is holding out for something you couldn’t have even imagined!  And if you just hold on,  He will bring back to life and resurrect those desires that seem to have died long ago, in His perfect time.

Our God is a God of resurrected dreams!  Know that with God, nothing is impossible.

Heavenly Father, I pray for all those reading who have dreams that have died.  I pray God, that the Word over their lives would be accomplished and that you would fulfill the desires of their hearts.  I thank You for hearing their thoughts and knowing what You have placed within them even before the foundations of the earth were laid.  I thank You that You are faithful to perform Your Word.  I pray for a measure of hope to be reinstalled within them, and a faith to believe that with You, nothing is impossible.  In Jesus’ Name.  Amen.

Questions: Can you tell us about a time when you felt that God was not hearing your prayers? How did you keep on trusting Him in spite of the situation?

About the Author Brigitte Straub

God’s promises for those who believe in Jesus Christ:

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” – Romans 8:28

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” – Philippians 4:6

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” – Romans 8:18

“For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ” – 2 Corinthians 1:5

Understanding God’s will

Some have asked, “If God is the Creator of all things, as the Bible truly says He is, then is God the author of evil as well?”  The short answer is no. However, this is not satisfying to many, as the immediate response to this is, why?

First, there is a big difference between commanding that sin exist and actually sinning.  As the Bible teaches, God is the source of all goodness and there is no evil in Him at all (1 John 1:5).  Therefore, the absence of His goodness is evil.  For example, just as the absence of light is darkness, or the absence of heat is coldness, so the absence of God’s goodness is evil.  Thus, the existence of sin is not the result of God’s positive agency, but the withholding of it.

Also, it is helpful to understand the way in which God commands things.  This is sometimes referred to as God decreeing or willing something to come to pass.  He does it in two ways.

One is known as God’s “will of decree” where He commands both good and evil to come to pass.  The other is God’s “will of command,” in which God commands people to do good and not to do evil.

Sound confusing?  Maybe an example will help.  Think of God seeing the world through two different lenses – one narrow and one wide.  Through the narrow lens, God sees all the sin in the world and is greatly grieved and angered by it.  Yet, through the wide lens, He sees all the evil in the world in relation to its eternal purposes.  Thus, when God looks at evil, the parts are ugly but the whole is beautiful.

But what are God’s eternal purposes that make the “whole” look beautiful? His glory.  As God’s holy justice is displayed by permitting and punishing sin, so God’s love and grace is displayed all the more abundantly by providing salvation through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection.  By allowing evil to exist, God shows to a greater degree the full measure of all His attributes and character. And by doing so, we delight in God more, which is to His greater glory.

Therefore, God is more glorious for permitting evil because it displays and communicates to people a more complete knowledge of who He is.  And the more we know of God and His character, the more our hearts delight in Him, namely, in His holiness, justice, love, and goodness.

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It’s a heavy question, one that seems better suited to far more experienced hands than mine.  But how will we learn if we always look to someone else for the answers? Sometimes we need to face the hard questions on our own.

About a year and a half ago a friend of mine had a perfectly normal first pregnancy followed by a perfectly normal birth.  She held her beautiful baby girl, Kennedy, and started making phone calls to tell everyone that she was here.  Everything was perfect and then everything went horribly wrong.  Kennedy lived for 45 minutes.  There are probably medical reasons why but none of them are good enough.  God could have spared Kennedy and He didn’t.

Does God break people on purpose?

Whether you think of it as God causing suffering or God allowing suffering to happen, the fact remains that we live in a broken world and terrible, awful things happen to the people God loves.  One of the hardest things to deal with in times of tragedy is balancing the idea of a God who loves us so much He sacrificed His Son to save us, with the reality that not everyone gets healed on earth.

I know all of the correct answers “He uses our suffering for His glory”, “it’s so that others will come to know God”, “God has a bigger plan” or the truly  horrific  “they’re better off in Heaven”.  None of these answers are enough.  I think that God does work in our suffering, and He does use our suffering, but I don’t think that’s WHY we suffer.

We forget that the world is not the way it was supposed to be. When sin entered the world in the garden of Eden everything was broken, and that includes us as well.  I don’t think that suffering is tool created by God to do great things. I think it is an extension of sin, another branch of the evil that entered the world.  God doesn’t break people because he can use that.  People are broken because the days are evil and in the midst of the suffering that was not God’s original plan, He does work.

There are much grander minds than mine to delve into God’s motivations and the state of the world.  I have to stick to what I know.  I know God loves me.  He loves me in ways too great for me to understand.  I know He loves me because He said so and because He went so far out of His way to save me. He reaches down into every detail of my life.

God doesn’t need my suffering to make Himself great – he is already the greatest of them all, Lord of Lords and King of Kings.  He doesn’t need to borrow glitter from me.  He works in my suffering, He is with me when I suffer, but I do not believe He breaks people because it’s great marketing for Heaven.  Where is the mercy in that?

My niece Corrina is deaf.  God could have fixed that, He chose not too.  He did provide surgeons and the amazing science of cochlear implants to give Corrina the chance to learn to hear and speak and sing.  I am incredibly grateful for that, but Corrina is still deaf.  Every time she takes her processors off – for bed, in the bath, at the park where the static from the slides is too much for the delicate equipment – she is plunged back into her silent world.  She will always be deaf, always be different.

Did God break Corrina? I don’t think so. I believe that God knitted her together.  I believe that He knew, long before we did that she would be born this way and He gifted her with the tenacious spirit needed to endure the therapy. He gifted her parents with the strength and patience to walk with her.  It’s tempting to compare suffering, to say that one road is harder to walk than another.  That’s probably true, but no road of suffering is easy.  Mercifully, miraculously, God does walk each and every road with us.

Not at His hand, but in His arms

Some are healed, some are saved, some are lost and others are irretrievably broken.  I don’t think we break at the hands of God; I think we break in the arms of God. He is with us in our suffering, He counts our tears.  He gives us hope and some days He is the only way we can keep breathing.

British poet John Milton wrote a sonnet I have always loved called “On His Blindness”.  Towards the end he poem he writes:

God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.

God does not need to break me to make Himself better known or more glorious.  As the poet wrote “his state is kingly”.   Suffering is not a marketing plan or a cruel joke.  Suffering came in to the world on the back of sin.  Humans are fragile; we break.  But thank God Himself that He is there to put us back together.  Whether it’s in this life, or the next.

If you are suffering, you are not alone. Many years ago the music pastor at my church gave the sermon that has stayed with me more than any other.  He was speaking about worship and praise and all of the things that it does, and then he said this: “If you are heart broken today, if you cannot sing, don’t stay home.  Come to church and just sit quietly.  Let me sing for you.” If that’s where you are today I invite you to talk to one of our email mentors.  Let us sing for you.  Whether you have a prayer request to share, need someone to listen or are looking for resources to help, whatever your situation we would love to help.  You can use this form to contact a mentor.  All mentoring emails are confidential and there is never a fee.

“For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.” (Psalm 22:24, NIV)

Are you facing an unfamiliar future? Try our interactive Life Lesson: Understanding Pain.  You will be matched with a study coach who will respond to your answers and offer additional resources.

Upcoming online chats: Join us for daily online chats! One of our features will be “Do you worry about losing your home?” on March 15 at 12:15 pm EST. Please join us to discuss how to stop worrying!

From a distance, “disabled” always seemed like an innocuous word

I remember thinking “she’s not disabled she just can’t hear!” I was angry that someone would label her that way.  And then I saw the fallacy in my words.  He’s not disabled, he just can’t walk, she just can’t speak, his brain just hasn’t developed. . . How quickly my thinking changed.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this

I remember so clearly the day we learned that my niece Corrina is deaf.  To be precise, I remember the following morning.  I was in church and as the congregation began to sing I realized that music would not be a part of Corrina’s world.  Tears ran down my cheeks, silent and unstoppable.  It was so brutally unfair.

Our family is fairly musical.  My entire childhood ran to a soundtrack of my Dad playing piano in the dining room.  We always sang in the car on road trips, we’re champion whistlers.  To this day my older brother will phone from the other side of the world to sing to me on my birthday.  The idea that Corrina would be outside of that, cut off from it, just broke my heart.  I kept thinking, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

I am one of them now.

Someone in my family is different. She has special needs and it has changed the way I see things.  Corrina’s parents choose to pursue cochlear implants for her. The implants are an amazing, though controversial, technology that doesn’t restore hearing, but does give the brain an alternate way to process sound.  With surgery and years of therapy Corrina has learned to hear, to speak and even to sing.  She has come so far.

But she is still deaf.  Anytime she has to take her processors off – at night, in the bath, at the pool, going down plastic slides – she is returned to her silent world. The processors are very visible, and always will be.  Corrina will live her life immediately identified as someone who is different.

It’s so interesting watching adults and children react around Corrina.  Adults will often look away.  They won’t mention it or they might ask if she has hearing aids.  Children are much more direct.  Once in a park a little boy came up to my sister in law and asked “Why does she have those things on her head?”  When Janie told him that they were there to help Corrina hear his face lit up.  “Like a robot?” he asked, delighted. He asked if they hurt and Janie assured him that they did not and then the little boy went back to playing with Corrina.

Once again I am reminded of how much we can learn from children.  Some adults would scoff at the boy’s direct question, but it was honest and not mean spirited.  Something was different and he wanted to understand.  I know Janie would much rather explain Corrina’s situation that have her be ignored or have the other children look away.

I don’t think of Corrina as disabled or broken, she’s just deaf. She’s also tall, red haired, quick to laugh and eager to help.  Her deafness is a part of who she is but it does not define her.  I’m sure that the same can be said of anyone who faces a physical challenge.

We hope and pray that our children will be born whole and healthy and many are, but not all.    It seems only fair that a child be given a body that works, a fresh start to begin with.  I wish I could tell you why some children have health issues, why some never leave the hospital, why others are taken so soon.  I do not have an answer to that.
I’m sure there are schools of thought on whether or not “disabled” is a nice word.  For me, it’s one that I avoid.  It may seem like semantics but I think it’s more than that. People are people first.  What we do, what are skills and limitations are, are an afterthought.  They do not define our hearts.   I know this: Corrina is not broken or damaged.  She’s deaf.   And she’s wonderful.

Upcoming online chats: Join us for daily online chats! One of our features will be “Do you worry about losing your home?” on March 15 at 12:15 pm EST. Please join us to discuss how to stop worrying!

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of Mordor where Shadows lie.’

In 1937, a professor of languages at Oxford University penned a novel that would spark the greatest fiction the world has ever known. That man was John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, or J.R.R. Tolkien. The book was called “The Hobbit.”

The book tells of a hobbit named Bilbo Baggins, who lives in a hole in the ground — not a dank, wet, nasty hole, but a comfortable hole, a hobbit hole. Bilbo is pushed by the wizard Gandalf out of a hobbit’s preferred quiet existence and simple enjoyment of food and life; Bilbo is swept into an adventure with dwarves and elves, dragons and gold.

Tolkien created a ring in this book, and this ring sparked another, greater tale, that has captured our hearts and imaginations for more than five decades.

One Book to Rule Them All, One Film to Bind Them All

Movies were made, but never captured the hearts and minds of the public the way the books did. The trilogy called The Lord Of The Rings was so great and so beautiful in its imagery and writing, that creating a movie was too daunting of a task. Along came director Peter Jackson, a round little man who reminds many of a Hobbit, undertook the translation of the books to film. The result was nothing short of stunning.

Of course, I am biased. I was a fan of the books before the name Peter Jackson meant anything. Though I cannot speak Elvish fluently, I could tell you the meaning of the line “ash nazg durbatuluuk ash nazg gimbatul ash nazg thrakatuluuk ash burzum-ishi krimpatul.” I could tell you that Tolkien penned an entire language for that single line. He created not just characters, but an entire world, complete with its own histories, spanned across 12 volumes (13 if you include the Silmarilion).

While not everyone is a fan of Tolkien’s writing style, his attention to detail made his books a wonderful classic of which everyone has heard, even if they have never read them.

Peter Jackson paid the same level of attention to detail, in undertaking the books as a project. There are many scenes in the movies which fans viewed and thought, “That was not in the book.” The greatest example is the love story between the immortal princess, Arwen, and the king of men, Aragorn. In the interest of a strong female presence in the movie, Jackson admittedly plays this story up to more detail than existed in the books. Where does the detail come from? From the appendices to “The Return of the King.”

Jackson also does a stunning of job of realizing special effects with the utmost detail. The result is convincing — It is a blur to tell where the “real” stuff ends and the special effects begin.

But the movies are not just a special-effects bonanza. The movies are a set of stories which, quite frankly, the world needs right now. The trailer for the third installment sums up the reasons why. “There can be no triumph without loss, no victory without suffering, no freedom without sacrifice.” It is a message that rings true to the message of Tolkien’s beloved novels, and resonates with the human spirit.

The Lord of the Rings follows the story of the ring that Bilbo Baggins finds on his adventure in “The Hobbit.” It is the One Ring, written about in the poem. The One Ring that the Dark Lord Sauron forged, the ring that will give him the power to conquer middle earth. The only way it can be destroyed is to cast it into the fire that it was forged from.

But anyone who holds the ring is corrupted by its power, so it cannot be destroyed. Frodo, who was given the ring by his uncle Bilbo, volunteers to take the ring to the fires of Mordor and cast it in. He does not understand what he is agreeing to, but his innocence and purity gives him the strength to undertake the task. Placing his own life in danger to save his little shire (and indeed, all of Middle Earth), Frodo sets out on his quest.

Written in a world that was still reeling from the tragedy of the First and Second World Wars, The Lord of the Rings offers the same hope then that it does now. There is hope. In the second movie, Samwise Gamgee, the pudgy but wise little hobbit offered Frodo this hope: There is some good in the world. There is something worth fighting for.

Hannah is a recent business graduate from McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She is currently a secretary for the Department of History, and enjoys writing in her free time.

Are you in a dark place today? Tell us about it. We want to pray for you.

During a very dark time in my life, this is what the Lord said to me:

During the long winter months, when nature appears to have lost all its beauty, life still flows deep within its darkest recesses. The trees appear naked and dead without their leaves and blooms. The ground seems hard and bare without the beauty of flowers and grass. But, in reality, life is ever flowing, ever-present.

It flows in the sap that is deep within the trees. It stirs within the seeds of flowers yet to bloom. Both are quietly at work, waiting for their appointed time to be awakened and spring to life.

Sometimes My people also must endure their long winter months of travail when their fruit seems to have withered and their branches seem bare. But deep within their roots, My Spirit moves with eternal life.

All may seem dark, lost, and devoid of life and beauty, but, in such a life lived with Me, My work still goes on.

Sometimes it must be that My precious ones must endure the darkness in order to see the Light. Then when My Light shines on them, they come to life and begin, once again, to blossom and bear fruit.

Our lives are one – yours and Mine. Therefore, all that is of My nature must pass into yours, if so be that your roots have grown deep within My Son. So, take courage.

Allow My Life to flow through you, especially in the darkest of times, and then all will be yours – love, joy, peace, comfort, hope, strength, power, trust, healing, patience, humility, wisdom, and victory. I watch over you to care for and bless you.

If you are in a dark place today, take heart, take refuge.  God loves you more than you can see and more than you can understand

Questions: If you are struggling in a dark place, tell us about it. How can we help you? Why does God allow us to experience these dry times of our life?

About the Author Lynn Mosher

About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was the governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David’s hometown, for the census. As a decendant of David he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancee, who was pregnant.

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped Him in a blanket and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the hostel.

There were shepherds camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David’s town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.”

At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises: “Glory to God in the heavenly heights; Peace to all men and women on earth who please Him.”

As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the shepherds talked it over. “Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.” They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the shepherds were impressed.

Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The shepherds returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they’d been told!

~ Luke 2:1-20

It was a simple scene that first Christmas – a rough room, a young couple, and nothing but a feeding trough to put the child in. It was probably quite cold and with family far away there was little help. Not exactly the Hallmark moment we like to show in Christmas pageants. And yet this rustic scene marked the greatest event in the history of mankind.

God’s Son became man and came to earth to save us. God had promised to send a Messiah, one who would save His people. He could have easily burst on the scene as a full grown man, a seven foot warrior with fiery eyes and arms of steel, and this is what many people were looking for, but wasn’t how God did it. He arrived in the arms of a young girl. He was, as another of our authors put it “a very small package, wrapped in rags, given from the heart of God. The perfect gift.”

God gave His only Son to die in our place so that we, in all our brokenness, could know forgiveness. He came so that we could know what love feels like, real love – love that never leaves, love that never disappoints, love that is never betrayed. He sent His Son into a corrupted world to bring us hope.

How are you doing this Christmas? Are you having a hard time finding hope in the world? Are you having a hard time finding peace? It doesn’t have to be that way. You can have peace and find hope and know forgiveness through a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer. Praying is simply talking to God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. Here’s a suggested prayer:

Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Saviour and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Bring peace to my world this Christmas. Make me the kind of woman you want me to be.

If this prayer expresses the desire of your heart, pray it right now and Christ will come into your life as He promised. If you invited Jesus Christ into your life, thank God often that He is in your life, that He will never leave you and that you have eternal life. As you learn more about your relationship with God, and how much He loves you, you’ll experience life to the fullest.

Text from Luke taken from The Message. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson, 1993, 1994, 1995.; as reprinted in A Christmas Digest, Copyright 1998 Used with permission.