Perspective stinks. That is, our perspective as humans,
principally because of how limited it is.
We’re constrained in ways we can’t see.
Time, for example, limits us. We
can only live in now. I’m not saying
that’s necessarily a bad thing. The
Bible itself, specifically tells us to live in today because that’s all we can
handle and control (Matthew 6:33-34).
And you know me … if the Bible tells it, I believe it and try to follow
it.
In other ways the living in
the now hurts. Especially when things
aren’t going the way we want them to … now isn’t fun. We can think about yesterday and hope for
tomorrow … but we’re stuck living in today.
Stuck in the time of pain, disappointment, heartache, frustration,
whatever. Stuck.
But … in my reading this
week, God helped me see hope in the midst of that stark reality. As I covered Zechariah 12 – 14, Malachi 1 –
4, Psalms 129 – 135, and Jeremiah 30 – 36, I came across Jeremiah 31:2 – 5,
which reads:
This is what the Lord
says: “Those who survive the coming
destruction will find blessings even in the barren land, for I will give rest
to the people of Israel.” Long
ago the Lord said to Israel: “I
have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love I have drawn you to
myself. I will rebuild you, my
virgin Israel. You will again be
happy and dance merrily with your tambourines. Again you will plant your vineyards on
the mountains of Samaria and eat from your own gardens there.
We are limited in our
perspective to today. God is not. God deals with today, tomorrow and yesterday
all at the same time. More importantly, He
allows us the ability to use His ability to supplant our inability to live with
a perspective outside of today.
In this passage, God is
speaking to Jeremiah and through Jeremiah to the Israelites to provide hope in
the midst of a horrific time in their history.
They’ve been captured and exiled in a foreign land and in chapter 29,
one of my favorite sections of the Bible, He tells Jeremiah to pass along the
message to the Israelites to settle in … that they should not expect to be rescued
just yet. He planned to rescue them,
sure, but there would be 70 years until He did.
In their here and now … their “today” … it was a tragic realization. No doubt where they were was in a place of
hysteria, regret, and agony.
However, in the midst of that
“today” and that “here and now” there was a tomorrow that was born
yesterday. Again, to God it’s all the
same, and it arises in His words to / through Jeremiah … some amazing and
incongruous words at that … “those who survive the coming destruction will find
blessings even in the barren land.”
Huh??? So, they were to grab hope
in the promise of “surviving” destruction in order to get to a barren
land? How’s that possible? Two ways … “for I will give rest” and “I have
loved you … with an everlasting love.”
He will (in the future) give us rest because He has already loved us (past
tense) with an everlasting (future / forever) love.
No matter where we’re at in
what we’re going through … we’re stuck in today. God is never limited to today. He is always in the process of giving us rest
and loving us everlastingly. He is at
the end of our today ready to receive us and deliver us into a blessed
tomorrow. That’s not to say that we all
live happily ever after … in this life.
But if we’re His child by faith in Jesus, we have eternity to look
forward to, and in that sense we have the 100 percent assurance of a happily
ever after.
So, what do we take from
this?
Maybe we’re in a troubling or
confusing time. Maybe it seems like it’s
never gonna get better. Maybe it just
feels like we’re in a funk or relegated to the background. Or, maybe our today feels cruddy … like it’s
the same as yesterday and no different than tomorrow will be. God lives outside our today and says, “don’t
worry, I’m here yesterday, today AND tomorrow, and I am loving you in all of
them. Forget yesterday, in faith get
through today, and let Me handle tomorrow.”
We might feel stuck, but God
always has us in process … in process of growing us, teaching us, preparing us,
and mostly, LOVING us. He knows what
He’s doing and He’s not doing it for nothing.
Somewhere down the road, our exile will end, and He will bring us home
to our equivalent of Jerusalem. Later …
eventually, in eternity, He’ll bring us to our REAL Jerusalem.
He’s always at work, He’s
always bringing us through what it feels like we’re stuck in. Our job is just to prayerfully trust Him,
taking Him at His word, and knowing that wherever we are today is NOT where
we’ll be tomorrow. Either because He’s
going to rescue us, or because He’s using today to better prepare us for
tomorrow. He doesn’t do accidents, so He
must have a purpose. The more we lean on
Him and trust He’s got tomorrow, the more we can brave the perils of today.
What areas of your life feel
like you’re stuck in today? What pains
feel like they’ll never abate? Ask Him
to reassure you that it’s only today and that He has tomorrow covered. Remember that He “will give rest” and that
His love for you (even in the struggle) is an “everlasting love.” Everlasting.
Love.
Handling today, trusting for
tomorrow …
MR
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