In honor of Labor Day… You know, if our country is so intent on stimulus packages and bailing companies out, maybe we should take a page from God’s book and just institute the Year of Jubilee. Then we would bail everyone out and let everyone start over. Leviticus 25:10-11 ‘You shall thus consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim a release through the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, and each of you shall return to his own property, and each of you shall return to his family. You shall have the fiftieth year as a jubilee; you shall not sow, nor reap its aftergrowth, nor gather in from its untrimmed vines.’
Psalm 43:5 Why am I discouraged? Why so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise him again– my Savior and my God! I know that my husband is really feeling discouraged right now. His job is chewing him up and spitting him out mercilessly. He’s frustrated with it and is finding it difficult to work so hard every day without any appreciation or hope of added compensation or promotion. And I totally feel for him. Teaching is a thankless job where you work really hard with students (teens, in my case) who may or may not want to be there (and most of whom think what is being taught is pointless and stupid) and usually end up with a tiny salary and all the blame when students aren’t as successful as the state thinks they should be. End of rant. I know the feeling of frustration. We’re in a position where our choices are incredibly limited. We don’t know what to do to get out of the mud we’re in, and it seems every time a vine lands close to the pit, it snaps just as we begin to pull free, landing us right back where we started. Faith tells me that God has a plan, even in this, and that He can work miracles because He has resources that we know nothing about. Faith tells me to keep trusting Him because He can work all this together for good. Faith also tells me that God is glorified in my weakness and that He is my strength when things are so tough and it’s hard to stand. My mind and the rest of me doesn’t always agree. But what else can I do? When there’s nothing left to do except trust that this isn’t all there is and this isn’t the best there is, it all comes down to faith and what I believe about the God who made me and loves me. Some days that’s easy. Some days that’s hard. I choose to believe that every day is one step closer to the light at the end of the tunnel.