A future with hope
The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in
From this time on and forevermore. Psalm 121:8
Read Jeremiah 29:11—14
These words have a reassuring ring in my ears, ‘a future with hope,’ ‘I will hear you,’ ‘I will let you find me,’ ‘I will restore your fortunes,’ ‘I will bring you back.’ I cannot miss God’s fondness for his people. For me to hear these words along with Israel I must realise something Israel had to know: this all depends on God’s act of forgiveness. They knew it. The writers of the scripture did not hide it. Their exile from home was all their own doing. It was the outcome of their own faithlessness put hard up against God’s righteous wrath.[1] But their return would have to be all God’s doing. It would arise because God had released them from what they had made of themselves. When I ask for forgiveness, it is God’s action that I seek, God’s action on my behalf. I am seeking his release from my self-inflicted woe.
Prayer
How kind you are to me, dear Lord. How tender to those you have made your own. You give a future filled, brim-filled with hope. Your grace takes the form of forgiveness. Forgiveness takes the form of release, of liberating me from living in gloomy responsibility for my wilful ways. Release takes the form of welcome into your household, sharing with your Son, delighting in life lived with you. I become an inheritor of your gifts. Your ways are mine to explore.[2] To think on these things is all quite glorious[3] and altogether thrilling.
[1] Jeremiah 11:1—17; 2 Kings 24:2—4
[2] Romans 8:14—17
[3] Romans 5:1—2