So many shadows cast over our lives, big and small. But He also casts a shadow, and it's meant for my protection, for my refuge, for my hope. He IS where my help comes from, and I DO believe that He is coming. I do KNOW that He is faithful.
I love celebrating communion during Christmas. Communion, our remembrance of why He came, the life we get to live because of the life He sacrificed. And Christmas, the season where we remember how Jesus started that journey on earth. How He came as an innocent, vulnerable, powerless baby to the lowliest, stinkiest, unruliest, dirtiest location. A baby, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger…
Life has a way of carving out deep canyons in our lives, leaving gaping holes in its wake. We are left with the jagged cuts of deep voids from the regular goings-on, but also from the work of the enemy to deepen and widen these chasms. And it can seem that these vacant chasms will always reverberate with the echoes of life-gone-wrong…
This passage has been woven throughout the last many years of my life. Such a beautiful description of what it’s like when the Lord fulfills the promises He’s made. When He turns ashes to beauty, when He exchanges mourning for gladness. It’s a promise, it’s a picture, it’s a hope, it’s the word of the Lord.
But it’s interesting how easily the enemy can turn a promise, a description of God’s goodness and intent toward our everyday lives into a threat or a taunting mockery, something that is for everyone else but not for me, something just outside my reach.
