Where's your Hope?

I voted today.

These were the words on the sticker my daughters wore home from school yesterday. It’s the second mock election since my oldest has started grade school. As a fifth grader this year, Nikelle had the opportunity to speak during the election as one of the candidate’s wives. She seized her role and, from what I hear, did a fairly convincing job.

This did not change her disappointment with those who cheered for the opposing party. She was upset that her friends and fellow classmates were not on her side. (My poor child is going to have a very difficult time when she is actually old enough to have her vote count.)

This morning I cast a vote to have my voice heard. I am so thankful to live in America where we have the opportunity to choose our leaders and have our say. Still, I felt defeated walking into the election booth. Not a one of the candidates truly represent me. I understand the thought of throwing our hands up in the air and saying “who cares”. However, when I look into the three sets of eyes that were given me by God and think about the nation they will one day live in, I can’t sit home.

It’s sad to think that this world can actually get worse. My heart hurts for my girls. It’s hard enough to embrace God’s Word and try to live by it on a daily basis today. What will it be like for them? I cling to the words of an old hymn. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.”

It was this very type of thought that I shared with my daughter in her frustration over the mock election results. Do we put our hope in Barack Obama or Mitt Romney or any other human being for that matter? She knew the answer was “No”. The only way to avoid feeling disheartened with life is to keep our hope in our Savior.

Let’s try to remember this no matter what the outcome of the election. Whoever is elected President is there because our nation, as a whole, has voiced their choice. Pray for our leaders. Then live your life to the full. We may not be able to immediately influence the President of the United States but if one person can impact one person in their life, who impacts another, who impacts another… that is where the revolution begins.

Change starts with me… and I’m choosing to put my hope in Christ.

"Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress where I will not be shaken." - Psalm 62:5-6

"But there’s far more to life for us. We’re citizens of high heaven! We’re waiting the arrival of the Savior, the Master, Jesus Christ, who will transform our earthy bodies into glorious bodies like his own. He’ll make us beautiful and whole with the same powerful skill by which he is putting everything as it should be, under and around him." - Philippians 3:20-21

Don't leave God and the Bible at Home Tomorrow

I just found out this ad existed. It shocked me to see it is supported by the President of the United States. If you live with the Bible as your guidebook for life, you need to watch this. We cannot leave the God and the Bible out of the election tomorrow. Some may think this ad is funny. I just find it sad.

Thanking Creator God

Living life in grateful response comes in recognizing who God is. With the awareness of God involved in every detail of my life, gratitude becomes part of a necessary relationship. Running a 5K becomes a conversation with Creator God as amazement of His design allows me to cross the finish line. The friends that join me as well as those who cheer me on are part of His workmanship to spur me on. These relationships are there to remind me of something greater.

The beauty of nature washes over my senses ushering me into the presence of God as I offer up praise to Him. Changing seasons with varying colors and temperatures along with the rejuvenation of the darkness of night and the sunlight of day are His gifts. A tapestry is woven together by the artist, God.

As I look at my family, overwhelmed with gratitude for the love surrounding me, I cannot help but thank God because it is He who made them. They are His blessings to me. Even the simplicity of a Saturday where no commitments are on the calendar points me toward my Heavenly Father. Relaxing with my husband and children can be embraced because He instituted rest.

If we are offering up thanksgiving without a thought of God, can it still be considered giving thanks? Who are we giving thanks to? What is thanksgiving without acknowledging The-All-Deserving-One-of-our-Thanks?

(The creation account in the Book of Genesis)

"They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen" - Romans 1:25

Why Thanksgiving?

Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863

By the President of the United States of America.  

A Proclamation.   

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.  

 

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People.

 

I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.  

 

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.  

 

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

 

 By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Grateful Response

Halloween has barely left our doorstep and Christmas music pulls at my heartstrings as I shop today. I don’t like the way this world pushes us past the beauty of November. This month is my favorite. I’m like my kids in that way. They would each choose the month of their birthday as well.

It’s more than that. Thanksgiving has an entire day set aside for gratitude. We humans have learned to feel a sense of entitlement for everything in our lives. It is so easily forgotten that “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)

This November, my challenge is not to set aside one day to give thanks (although I LOVE that we have a day set aside for this.) Rather, I want myself and those I love to realize that life is to be lived in grateful response for what God has done for us. Let’s truly acknowledge Him and thank Him for who He is: Creator, Father, Redeemer, Savior, Friend, etc.

In learning to live a lifestyle of grateful response to God, will we not also find the joy-filled life we so desperately search for?

“Make thankfulness your sacrifice to God.” (Psalm 50:14)

“Giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors me.” (Psalm 50:23)