Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Deuteronomy 31: 6 (NIV)

Then Joshua said to the people, “Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”
Joshua 3: 5 (ESV)

Last year seemed as just a blur.

A year filled with both blessings and heartaches still lingering, yet through days which passed quickly by.

But a year in which, through our better moments, we felt we were not alone.

And now another year opens before us.

Yet it descends with an unwelcome sledgehammer on the lives of too many of us, and on the lives and families of others we know and love.

Hammered with news or personal experiences of heart wrenching, unexpected and inexplicable losses of family, children and dear friends and mentors.

Hammered by words of unexpected illnesses.

While an all too familiar and wearisome virus continues to run rampant throughout the world and country in towns, neighborhoods and families of younger and older.

Decisions loom before many of us with answers yet unclear, or the decisions we’re afraid to make.

So decisions loom unmade and without direction before us still.

A sense of powerlessness and lack of control is present.

Suggesting that maybe we’re on this journey all alone, no matter how many or how few people are around and with us.

Really?

No. It just isn’t so.

The truth Moses told the Israelites in the passage in Deuteronomy above—

“…the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you,”is a truth for each of us today, no matter what hits us or tries to hurt us.

And as the Israelite nation stands on the bank of the mile-wide raging Jordan River, readying to cross, and finally enter into the Promised Land, Joshua shares a word from God with them when he says—

“Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the LORD will do wonders among you.”

No matter what we face. No matter the blur of life.

No matter the issues, losses and heartaches which hammer us or those we love—we are never alone.

Never alone.

The Lord is there—in control—around and within our lives.

Whatever we’re in the middle of, or whatever is before us.

Never alone.

In His Name–Scott