MORNING GLORY 17
The phrase “be patient in affliction” woke me wide awake the other morning. Does that ever happen to you? 6am never felt more like my 2nd cup of coffee than in that moment. If you’ve watched the news or scrolled social media at all over the past several weeks, you’ll know why these words were tugging at my sleeping mind. I googled and landed on Romans 12:12.
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
These words speak truth and life into the darkness plaguing our world these days. I don’t have all the words to say or the understanding to know. But I do know pandemic, quarantine, injustice, death, suffering are not words we pegged 2020 to bring back in blissful 2019. The realities on this side of heaven are hard to bear some days. It’s a struggle to be joyful in hope when affliction surrounds us. How do we remain faithful in prayer when words don’t come? Thank heavens we are not here alone to process and to carry these questions.
I pray these words from Romans 12 bring comfort to you today, friend. I sit here across the table from you, coffee in hand. As our hearts yearn for truth and justice, let’s lean on what we know is true: the unending grace of our God. In Jesus’ name we can rise together, fighting for what is right and good. And we can be confident Jesus is for us and fights for us. Until the day He comes again to be here with us, let it be so.
For this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. -Romans 8:25