It's a beautiful day here in middle GA; we're back at the homestead and taking care of the normal things that stack up when you are away for the better part of a month. We've been on the road for some amount of time every month since last Aug...wierd feeling finally putting the luggage away for a bit.
We're in that "2-week wait" period...which is both an exciting and tough time. It's the closest we have ever been to the miracle we so long for; the very test results that we so long to see show that one or both of the miracle tinyTUTTs are still alive inside us also hold the potential to present a momentary permanence of "not this time"....and that is a heavy reality that looms and keeps everything in somewhat of a humanly check. We know God has everything under control and rest in His love, grace, and blessings.
Each day since our return, we have done a bible study in the "nursery"...our front room that has been vacant for so long and is so ready to hear the joyously-shrill cry of an angel of his. God had a great message for us in our study this past Sunday...asking us to have hope like Jeremiah (Jeremiah 32:6-29). And the accompanying story on hope has some awesome thoughts that really spoke to us...so much so that it would be remiss not to share them here. So here's the short story of "Living in Hope":
Buying that field in Anathoth was a deliberate act of hope. All acts of hope expose themselves to ridicule because they seem impractical, failing to conform to visible reality. But in fact they are the reality that is being constructed but is not yet visible. Hope commits us to actions that connect with God's promise.
What we call hoping is often only wishing. We want things we think are impossible, but we have better sense than to spend any money or commit our lives to them. Biblical hope, though, is an act--like buying a field in Anathoth. Hope acts on the conviction that God will complete the work that he has begun even when the appearances, especially when the appearances, oppose it.
The great looming fact is this: in the flurry and panic of that day in Jerusalem, not at all unlike any randomly selected day in anyone's week, with the populace divided between a dull acquiescence to the inevitable and wild schemes for escape, the single practical act that stands out from the historical record is that Jeremiah bought the field in Anathoth for seventeen shekels. That act made the word of God visible, made a foothold of it for anyone who wanted to make a way out of chaotic despair into the ordered wholeness of salvation. Many made their way out.
We have to get practical. Really practical. The most practical thing we can do is hear what God says and act in appropriate response to it...Hope-determined actions participate in the future that God is bringing into being. These acts are rarely spectacular. Usually they take place outside sacred settings. Almost never are they percieved to be significant by bystanders. It is not easy to act in hope because most of the immediate evidence is against it. As a result, we live in one of the most impractical societies the world has ever seen. If we are to live practically, we must frequently defy the practicalities of our peers. It takes courage to act in hope. But it is the only practical action, for it is the only action that survives the decay of the moment and escapes the scrapheap of yesterday's fashion.
In everything God has a purpose; and we hold onto hope like Jeremiah that even when the immediate evidence has been against us over the last two years, His plan for us it to be parents and He is going to complete the work He has started. To prepare our fields we have done our best, we humbly let God handle the rest.
Hoping for a "positive"
Chad, Gena, Nash, Teebo, Blasty-1 and Blasty-2
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