Have patience. Have faith.
Your trials will not continue forever.
The continual testing of your very essence will survive this difficult place
and time.
We believers are as people
without a true physical home, though we know where that home truly is and we
long to be in it. To live is Christ and
to die is gain – true words that reflect the seeming predicament of our lives.
The time is almost at hand when
we shall move on. Already you are in the
Kingdom, already you are with him.
Ephesians tells us we are seated with him in the heavenlies even
now. But surely you wish that were full
time and all about physically as well.
The Lord will complete the
heavenly plan. It will happen. There will be more joy for the believer, and
greater confounding and sense of being lost for those who are not. And we who with unwavering faith keep our
eyes on him must realize that in all things God works for good in those who have
been called according to his purpose.
Though we persevere and intercede and pray and obey and at times still
puzzlingly see no results that we recognize, we still maintain. For he is good. For his loving-kindness endures forever.
He is God. And we are not, though we move steadily to
being more and more like him.
He has told us what is to
happen. In explicit words difficult at
times to comprehend. He does nothing
without revealing it to his prophets.
Do not let your heart be
troubled. Find that place of peace and
live in it, retreat to it, even though at times you must move and act and
represent him in a desperate world. He
will never lose you.
Sometime ago I wrote this poem
that fits well here. Maybe you have
already seen it.
We are never home.*
Not now. Not here.
No matter how we try.
We cannot get there.
The moments of joy
Family and friends bring
Cannot dispel
The longing of our hearts.
Harsh though the words,
God’s children are
Strangers in a foreign land,
Aliens on planet earth.
This is not our world.
But we will soon be home,
That we know.
Our hope is secure.
*We Are Never
Home, by John Newlin, published in Standard January 11, 2004
Keep Your Eyes on Jesus!
(February 2014)
Copyright ©
2014 by John Newlin
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