Hope and a Future


“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” – Jeremiah 29:11

 

I came across this verse tonight while reading through a book on the journey through grief.    I have been doing a lot of thinking since passing the year mark of Scott’s death.  I have felt the pull of despair and discouragement harder in the last couple of weeks than I have in a little while.  I believe that my focus over the past year was moving forward day by day with a subconscious goal of making it through the first year.  Since “making it through the first year” I have felt like I am wandering aimlessly.  Any time I think of the future I feel down again, as reality hits hard that my partner, my spouse, my best friend is not part of that future.  It seems blank and I have no vision for what the future will look like.  Right now that is a depressing feeling.  When I read the verse above tonight – a verse that I have heard often in my life – the phrase that popped out at me was “hope and a future.”  While I may not feel hope for the future right now, I am clinging to this verse as God’s promise that the hope for the future will come.  I believe that the turning point in my grief journey will come when I find a “hope and a future.”  However long it takes me to get to that point, I know I am moving in that direction – just as an artist begins with a rough sketch, I believe that the foundations and background for that hope and future are being formed now – I just can’t see it for what it is.  That turning point will be when I recognize the beginnings of the sketch and the colors beginning to be put down on the canvas.  That clarity and wisdom will come from God, in His time.

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