WEEK ONE | LOVING THE QUESTIONS—LIVING THE HOPE
What Are You Doing Here?
Reflection
Fresh from our commissioning as Salvation Army officers, my husband and I, with our two young children, headed off to our first appointment in the very heart of Africa. This was our dream, our hope, our plan for a lifetime. But three years into the appointment, illness forced us to return home, carrying the broken fragments of that dream.
In settling into life back home, we held onto God’s promise that he knew the plans he had for us (Jeremiah 29:11) and we watched and marvelled at how God slowly fashioned new dreams, new opportunities for service out of those broken pieces. God, who knows every end from every beginning, was not daunted by our disappointment or our sense of failure. He knew what lay within us, opened a path ahead of us and gave us his peace.
After the prophet Elijah’s great showdown against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he was threatened by Jezebel and he fled ‘afraid … for his life’. In a desert place he lay down under a broom tree, told God he had had enough, and prayed that he might die. But God had not finished with Elijah. As the prophet stood at the mouth of a cave God asked him, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ (1 Kings 19:9). God was not done with Elijah. God had more in store for Elijah’s life; more hope to reveal to his people.
Invitation
Are you trusting God and allowing him to fill you with his peace, that you might overflow with his hope?
There is an old Christian tradition
that every person comes into the world
with a song to sing
a message to deliver
an act of love to offer.
No one else can sing your song
deliver your message
or offer your act of love.
These are entrusted only to you.
Francis Dewar
Paul wrote to the believers at Rome, ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit’ (Romans 15:13). This verse is a promise for our Self-Denial offering and a reminder of the hope to which we have been called.
Our offering plus God’s blessing will become a gift of hope for many others.
