What challenges, hindrances, or disadvantages hang over your head at this stage of your faith journey?
Pick up a newspaper. Tune into a radio station. Surf the Net. Dreary stories are plentiful. The economy plummets. Terrorists provoke panic. Political chaos prevails. Extortionists plunder. Calamities produce pressure. The future is pessimistic. It would be easy to be caught in despair, depression, and desperation. It’s a fact. We live in unsettling times.
When looking at the future it is easy to think of one word to describe it: “unknown.” I love this famous poem, written by Minnie Louise Harkins and used in the end-of-the-year message of King George VI, in 1939:
I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
’
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’
And he replied,
‘Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!’
So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.
So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?
I’m not sure what you may be going through, or what may be taking place in your lives individually, or with your families. Put your hand into the hand of our all-knowing God and walk into the unknown. Abraham did and thousands of years later we are still telling the story.
God is in control. Someone said, “Those that see God’s hand in everything, best leave everything in God’s hand.”
One senior minister earnestly prayed repeatedly, “I put my tiny, little hand into your big, big hand.”
How true!
James Poitras 