As the watchman waits for sun’s first rays And a bridegroom turns when the music plays Hope stands outside our door
As before the flower a bud first swells And the Robin comes as the snow still melts Spring breathes and longs for more
At the sunset hour when the grave was sealed In that silent night when no church bells pealed Who knew what lay in store?
In grief Mary trudged to the tomb that day Before the dawn turned black to gray To that terrible place Where her Lord had died Till He came Called her name Now forever alive!
Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. Proverbs 13:12 NIV
When I worked for his dad thirty years ago, I met Jacob who was a young man right out of Bible school. The one thing that impressed me then was his passion for serving Christ, right in our local community. This was long before he left for the mission field and I have been blessed to follow his ministry through the years, first in Turkey, and now in Armenia. If you are interested in learning more about what is really happening on the ground in Iran from both a spiritual as well as a personal perspective, it is worth investing twenty-one minutes of your time to listen. Then I would ask you to pray for that outreach, just over the border from the war.
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to proclaim Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, and to set at liberty those who are oppressed. " Luke 4:18 ESV
Whether you turn on the CBS Evening news, The Fox Report or CNN news, it is likely that the headlines are all bad news stories. As the old saying goes, “If it bleeds it leads.” With unimaginable cruelty, unending wars and merciless natural disasters pummeling our airwaves, it is easy to suppose that things have never been so bad. But with the slaughter of worshippers in the temple by Pilate, multitudes of blind, crippled and lepers begging in the streets and the hypocrisy of the religious leaders, in the days of Jesus, it seems that things weren’t really all that much different back then. So, you might think that in His first sermon, Jesus should have denounced the Roman atrocities, demanded fair treatment of slaves or condemned the religious charlatans who held power in Jerusalem. But instead, Jesus went to the ancient prophetic writings of Isaiah and announced to everyone longing for better things, that He had come to proclaim God’s Good News, and that this news was especially for the poor. Why the poor? Were they any more deserving of this message than anyone else? No! Rather this good news for them was like a home cooked meal to a starving man, a storm shelter in a tornado or a Spring thaw after many subzero weeks of Winter.
Sharing this message of Good News with the precious residents of Discovery Villages this past Sunday was a real blessing. I found that God’s word didn’t need to be hyped up, twisted into modern relevancy or updated, for it to bring hope to their hungry hearts. If you are also thirsty for that same good news of Jesus, then I pray that this little message will lift you up today.
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