Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.
Hebrews 11:1
As I entered my upstairs office recently where I spend a good bit of time, and which my granddaughters call “Granddaddy’s and our office,” I reflected again on the paintings my granddaughters had done through the past years on the easel in that room, which is always up and awaiting their return.
One painting is fastened on the face of the easel. Three hang proudly across the mantle of the fireplace facing my desk, a number hang on the side of the fireplace, one is framed and hangs on the wall, and many others are kept in a neat stack on a cabinet in an alcove off the study.
It has been a while since my granddaughters and I have thumbed through all the paintings they have done. The last time we did, they recalled proudly every stroke, splash, dash, and dot of paint they had made on those initially blank pages.
They had seen something there, which they would not have seen on the pages in a coloring book. They had seen something on those blank pages from the nooks and crannies of their imaginations. Something fresh had made its way from the recesses of those intimate places that is their being, and through their tiny fingers to the paint-laden bristles of a brush and onto a blank sheet of paper, where they began to tell those around them something of who they were, what they valued, and what they believed.
The roots of their faith, their beliefs, and their values were finding expression onto those blank pages. There was no darkness or fear in those paintings, only light and hope. And the direction of their continuing formation, and the beliefs and values which will guide their decisions in the years to come, in an uncertain and difficult world, will be determined moment by moment, not only through their imaginations of all that can be but through the quality of their interaction with the God Whom they each have accepted as their Savior, the encouragement from others, and the quality of their environment.
Following that passage above, the writer of Hebrews recounts incident after incident of saint after saint, who demonstrated their faith by following their God without being able to see the end of the journey. They believed in and imagined a future painted by the hand of the One who had proven time and again His faithfulness to them. Their lives and hearts were shaped by their faith in a God whose evidences of love were all around and Whom they trusted to paint each new day of their lives.
As we approach the blank pages of our each day of our future, do we approach them with fear or faith?
Do we approach them believing in a God who has proven He can be trusted, or do we set Him to the side and cower in fear of the unknown and unexpected?
Certainly there is enough going in our nation and in the world around us to give us pause and reason to fear. But then in our better moments, we remember that God is still there through it all.
Faith or fear—how do we approach tomorrow?
Let me suggest that no matter what the day looks like before us, that we approach it with Him—in faith.
Because, as we stand before the blank pages of all our tomorrows, we can always be assured and have faith in the God who created us, to guide our hands and hearts as we paint the pages of each day of our lives—with Him.
In His Name—Scott
Copyright 2016. Scott L. Whitaker. All rights reserved.
