So the other day I was about to leave the house for my first day back at work since Christmas, when some big old guilt feelings started to kick in (mostly related to "it's your first day back and you haven't spent any time with God this morning and you work in a church and they'll all be able to tell"). So I quickly grabbed a Bible and dunked in a for a verse to contemplate while I walked to work. Somehow (a large amount due to its near-the-middle-of-the-Bible-ness) I ended up in Lamentations, and 3:25 caught my eye:
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him
Lovely. Beautiful verse. Lots in there actually. I like the idea of my hope being IN God. So it's in him and IN him. I hope in him in a future tense kind of way, I have hope because of his promises and because I trust that he is who is says he is, but I can only hope like that when he is the holder of my hopes and dreams and my...self. You know? When I am IN him. In his hands. Seeking him - like it says right there. Not when I'm trying to wriggle out of those hands to drag my pathetic little self around on my own...
All day I found that God was speaking to me through those words. It was great.
My problem now is that (and I have an inkling this might be one of those "it's just me" things, like the fact that I have a really hard time throwing away clothes if I have happy memories of wearing them, not because they remind me of those times but because it feels like they've done something for me and I'm an ungrateful wretch if I just get rid of them) when I sat down this week to sort out properly where in the Bible I'm going to plant myself for a while I felt like I had to start with Lamentations. It felt mean to just hit and run like that when it had really come through for me in a time of need.
So I'm finding myself stuck in Lamentations for a while. Not the most motivational-speaker-esque place to kick off a new year.
But interesting.
