How is your 2020 actually going versus the way you wanted it to go? This year has been crazy to say the least- almost nothing is going the way we predicted or planned for it to go.
I spend a lot of time in prayer before a year starts, and I ask God to give me a word for the year. This year the word I received was “expect the unexpected.”
The unexpected this year just feels dark. Nothing ever happens exactly as we want it to, but the feeling of darkness this year is overwhelming. How are you holding up? How are you feeling?
I just finished reading a really amazing book by Craig Groeschel called Hope in the Dark. In this book he unpacks three chapters from the book of Habakkuk, who is one of the prophets. Habbakuk, like us, is in the middle of a dark time and is asking the question, “Can God be present even in THIS?”
Habakkuk 3:17-19 reads, “Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights.”
Even though the income that I thought I was going to make is not there, the job I thought I was going to have is not there, the way that I thought school was going to go is different, and I’ve lost people in my life I thought I was going to have with me longer.
Habakkuk is speaking to us still today through his own experiences of darkness.
“Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior. He enables me to go on the heights.”
Can we trust God to raise us up out of this? Can we trust him to have a plan, even when it’s not going the way that we thought it would? This year does feel dark. But we have light. We have a God of light who is a blessing to us. Will we trust in him? Will we surrender? We have no control over what’s going to happen, but in the midst of this darkness, we can choose hope. We need to be transformed because the other people around us are experiencing the same darkness. We’re not in this alone.
What the world needs right now are people of light. It needs people to rise up and be light in this darkness. Can your light cut through the darkness for someone else? Can you lift them up?
And if you will pursue this, if you will pursue your own transformation and your own light, you may be the spark that lights an entire fire in your neighborhood or for your family or at work. Be that light, be that spark, be that hope in the darkness.