by Joanne Wiklund
With stress and trauma in the world today it is almost contagious. We can catch it by a weather report, a news cast, a text from someone or some organization we don’t know on our phone. I learned over the past four years that when I try to be the Captain of my ship, occasionally I get distracted and drift off course. I need a bigger and bigger ship because I’ve taken on so much cargo. You know…worries, anxieties, health, wealth and daily chores, of others as well as my own. I become weary.
I forget to take time to read my Bible, call family and friends I want to hear from. Then I realize I need to have to have a little talk with myself. It’s okay to do that, especially if I focus on good things. Remind myself who I am: the daughter of a King and my parents, a wife, a mom, a sister, a grandmother, a friend. All those roles I carry with me through the day. I am very blessed, I have a roof over my head. I can still walk, talk and most of all LAUGH. I have old friends who laugh with and at me. As I often do.
Why am I telling you and myself all this? To remind myself I have HOPE. In Jesus Christ, my Lord. He is THE HOPE FOR US ALL! I heard someone say that not only is He the Prince of Peace, he is also the Prince of Pieces. He can take broken people and broken things and put them back together. (Jentezen Franklin I think.) Hope is a noun as well as a verb. We can give people hope or show them hope in what we do.
James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the Devil and he will flee from you.”
James 4:9 “Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mournng , and your joy to heaviness. 10, Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and he shall lift you up.”