It is a new day

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts. 

(Eleanor Roosevelt)

Yet there is one ray of hope: his compassion never ends. It is only the Lord’s mercies that have kept us from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his loving-kindness begins afresh each day. My soul claims the Lord as my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him, to those who seek for him. It is good both to hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:21-26)

It is good BOTH to HOPE and WAIT QUIETLY. In the quietness of waiting, do you brim with hope and expectation? If you are relying upon the loving-kindness of God today, then I daresay you are filled with the best hope there is! It might be hard for us to understand God's compassion, but we don't have to fully understand it to appreciate it and thank him with a grateful heart. The Lord's mercies are new each and every day - dare I say they are new each and every moment of each and every day? There has never been even one time I have turned to him in quiet expectation for his mercy that I have not received it in abundance. How about you?

With the new day comes new strengths and new thoughts. Yesterday may have been a bit challenging but remember yesterday is in the past now - it need not give you challenges today. As new as this day is dawning upon us, so are God's mercies and his strength. With God's mercy comes his strength - we don't get one without the other. What does mercy do? It gives what was not earned or deserved - along with the strength to get up and start walking once again. We may have fallen, or just plain sat down in defeat, but today's new mercies put us on new footing and give us new 'stamina' for the day ahead.

Stop for a moment and ask God what new 'thought' he is placing within your mind and heart today. We don't do that often enough - we just think those things come into our minds all on their own sometimes, but God places new thoughts within us each and every day. Some will become the seed thoughts upon which we build bigger dreams and hopes. Others will be the ones we know to act upon right now - having received all we need in the way of his strength and protection to take those steps he is asking us to take. We might want to drag our feet a little, remembering the challenges of yesterday all too frequently, but when we finally realize we cannot change yesterday, we will be apt to use today's strength to put today's thoughts into action! Just sayin!

Idling on purpose

Yet there is one ray of hope: his compassion never ends. It is only the Lord’s mercies that have kept us from complete destruction. Great is his faithfulness; his loving-kindness begins afresh each day. My soul claims the Lord as my inheritance; therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is wonderfully good to those who wait for him, to those who seek for him. It is good both to hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. (Lamentations 3:21-26)

Everything around us may be collapsing, kind of going amiss in all kinds of different ways, but as Jeremiah declared: "Yet there is one ray of hope: his compassion never ends." Take heart - God hasn't abandoned you to the catastrophe of the day. He hasn't brought calamity upon you - but he stands at the ready to deliver you from that which has come!

One important thing I like within this passage is the part about his loving-kindness beginning afresh each day. That means his grace in our lives is as fresh as today - we don't have to rely upon 'old, stale grace' - we have new grace each breath we take. Grace is renewed moment-by-moment, but it also renews US moment-by-moment. What else can give us that kind of hope? I daresay nothing at all.

Wait upon God and you will never go away disappointed. That was the hardest lesson for me to learn because I am a 'doer'. I like to get things done NOW - waiting wasn't really in my vocabulary. I didn't do 'idleness' very well. I am learning that trusting God means I might just need to put things on 'idle' a bit in my life and take that required 'idle time' to just get alone with him. It is what brings clarity, refreshes my spirit, and renews my mind.

Does our deliverance always come the way we desired it to come? If your life is anything like mine, the answer to that one is that it seldom comes in the manner I predicted or desired it would come. In fact, God often surprises me with how 'fresh' his mercies are in my life. How about you? Has God surprised you with the freshness of his mercies this week? Revel in the newness of his grace - for his mercies are never stale or stagnant! Just sayin!