Especially during this year, we might find ourselves in over our heads with fear and worry. Some days it feels like we're drowning in uncertainty. Other days we feel full of hope about the future. The reality is that we'll all have times where we feel like things will be okay and others where we're clinging to Jesus in the darkness holding on for dear life. But every day, we can know with our whole hearts that God redeems everything.
Jeremiah 17:7-8 even reminds us:
“But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit” - Jeremiah 17:7-8
Rain falls in all of our lives and sometimes it’s a fierce storm and others, it just feels like a constant drizzle. But when the clouds cover and it gets dark and we try to get our footing at the base of another impossible mountain, we have to remember things aren’t always as they appear.
When life piles up around us and the darkness overcomes, maybe we aren’t being buried. Maybe we are really being planted. Because that’s how we grow.
So many of us believe in the saying, "the grass is greener on the other side" but the sad truth is that a new set of circumstances isn't the cure. Like Paul highlights in Philippians 4, our joy surpasses our circumstances whether we are living in abundance or scarcity. If we want to truly bloom where we are planted, we need to come to realize that the grass is not greener on the other side, it's greener where you water it.
“The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different set of circumstances.” - Elisabeth Elliot