As I was praying this morning, I was walking back and forth, as I sometimes do, and my eyes settled on a special plate and saucer set mounted on my shelf. It is from the Liberty Blue collection. I acquired these pieces years ago at Goodwill because I loved their aesthetic. Not knowing their value, I only picked up these few pieces and left the others there. And yes, I’m still kicking myself over it today.
I have a fondness for things of the past. If you were to describe the aesthetic of my home, I would call it “cozy vintage.” I love to incorporate things of bygone years into the design of my house. And while my whole home doesn’t emanate this style, there are many pieces that do. They remind me of simpler times. Their beauty, for me, is in the feelings they evoke of a bygone era.
Sadly, all our days of remembering are not filled with such fondness. When we look through our history, there may be experiences and events we wish we could change. Things that we would desire the outcome to be different.
Unfortunately, we cannot undo history. But what we can do is lean into the faithfulness of God and remember how He brought us through.
The Book of Lamentations was written by the prophet Jeremiah. In it, he expresses his grief and sadness over the now fallen Jerusalem. The people had turned a deaf ear to the warnings of God sent through the mouth of the prophet, and now tragedy has taken hold of the land. Destruction, hurt, and pain are mixed in the rubble of the ruins from the invasion of the enemy. Their future as a nation looks dismal at best.
But then there comes a shift in Jeremiah’s thinking. Something beautiful began to rise in his heart that could not be extinguished by the disaster that surrounded him. And that beautiful uprising is called hope. This prompted him to pen the familiar words of Lamentations 3:21: “This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.”
Jeremiah could have continued to wallow in sorrow with the belief that their case was beyond help, without hope. Instead, he chose to lean upon the faithfulness of God, Who always gives us a reason to hope. Rather than letting the feelings of dismay and despair overwhelm him and execute their language into his life – in the middle of this rehearsal of the negative, he chose to rewrite the narrative of how he would personally view this story. He chose to interject a praise of the positive, which was the faithfulness of God (Lam. 3:22, 23).
And we can do the same. While there may be hard parts of the story, there is a wonderful part: God Himself. The daily news may be littered with hopelessness, but our story declares that because of God, we still have hope.
“This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope!” Like Jeremiah, we can have a made-up mind to focus on all that God had previously done, remembering how He had moved in times past. Recalling the positives of His faithfulness will help us to store an arsenal of truth for the days ahead.
More Inspiring Articles:
“Remeber What the LORD Thy God Did!”
“Encouragement While Enduring”
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