Last week, in our quest to find a space for our family this coming year, Deb and I visited a couple of available rental properties in the Cluj area. As a larger family, finding houses or apartments that have more than two bedrooms isn’t that easy. Cluj is also an expensive city, second only to Bucharest in Romania for cost of living. We had a team from the US coming for 5 weeks the next weekend, so with a looming timeline, we weren’t exactly panicking, but we were definitely praying!
We ended up looking at only three places, the third place was like a miracle for us. Firstly, it was plenty large enough for our needs with 3 bedrooms plus a basement apartment which initially was going to be rented separately but the landlord changed his mind and included it. Secondly, the price was $250 more than we have budgeted, so we offered what we could, and it was accepted. Thirdly, its perfectly, for us, outside the city but close enough (10 minutes by car) to the center where we have regular meetings. Fourthly, I’m not sure why I’m numbering these, but the owner couple are super nice, down the street, and speak english really well having lived a few years in the US themselves. Finally, the views, stunning, inspiring, and both Deb and I are genuinely thrilled to have space to walk, pray, and I even have an office, something we were also hunting for separately for both my own work and Deb’s spiritual directing.
So thank you God for caring for us, and blessing us so specifically. We, for the first time since the war began, feel ‘at home’. It’s a strange feeling. Last year was so chaotic, and jarring for everyone, everything just felt like a dream, one that you want to wake up from. After our time in the US this past winter, we started to sense not only that our family won’t be fully returning to Ukraine even if the war ended tomorrow, but that this coming season God was opening doors for us to re-root, and begin a new chapter.
New chapters are scary. When you are young, at least for us, new chapters were fun, exciting new adventures. As we approach 50 years in this journey, we’re taking stock more carefully to number our days, to live more intentionally into the present moments, seeing them for just how precious they are. Less is more, we don’t have former grandiose visions of saving the world for Jesus, we are increasingly content (Deb more than I admittedly) with going deep in relationships with fewer, investing in what’s in front of us, rather than potentialities. We still have vision, but the vision is related more to being shaped by God’s love, and being more vulnerable, more true, more integrous and whole than it is what we can do outwardly with our skills and talents.
Anyway, we found a home. We’re renting it for the next 11 months, and have no idea what this coming year will entail exactly, and what God has for us, but we’re grateful for the friends, neighbors, and coming season with our 4 youngest, who are growing up fast and journeying through change with us. We’re also really happy to have Broderic and Kristin just across town, at the guest house. Hopefully they will be able to raise enough support by the fall for their own place. We’ll be, Lord willing, releasing that space as we transition away from refugee care to new things in Romania and Ukraine.
As much as we relish the new space, having been here now just a few days, we don’t relish the visa process. In Ukraine, we didn’t have to worry about visas for the past 10 years as we have permanent residence there. In Romania, it’s back to the drawing board for us. We have to leave the country this week, to Hungary by car, and return with new stamps to begin the process again for another year as ours expire on May 1. Tomorrow night, Clark may have to stay overnight as did Broderic for their visas at the mall, to make sure we can be seen Wednesday morning at immigration. We hope and pray all goes well, in the next 24hrs we’ll need to get insurance, health certificate, pay for stamps and lawyers, then if all goes well, drive on the weekend to Hungary.. it’s a bit risky that we’re leaving, we could be denied entry back into Romania, as the law is not so clear in our case. Such is life with visas, a throw back to our early days in Ukraine.
Next week there is a story being published with Radio Free Europe on our family. I’ll post it here. I want to try and write more and blog again now that I have a stable place, with stable internet. I thought I should at least give thanks, and if you read our blog still, say thank you as well for praying, supporting us, we are so thankful for the friendships and ways God has provided for us through the past 17 years, or however long its been.
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine..”
Ephesians 3:20
In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, several themes emerge. One that I am freshly digesting, and challenged by, is the nature of this ‘inheritance’ he refers to that believers have access to, or rather, already possess. As followers of Jesus Christ, the church has taken comfort through the ages that this life is not all there is. But, is eternal life the primary gift, or even what the early Christian writers focused on as the glorious inheritance?
As I trace the themes through the letter, it seems to me that Paul’s heart cry is not that folks would go to heaven, but rather that they would experience something in the present, that something of heaven would invade their present reality individually, and as a community of faith.
The bulk of Paul’s devotional encouragement, his charge to the saints in Ephesus, lies in chapter 1:18 – 2:22. The outline, in a condensed version goes something like this:
I pray that the Father of Jesus Christ would give you wisdom and revelation as you come to know him… (1:17)
So that you would know the glorious inheritance among you all… which is His power working now among you.. (1:18-1-19)
This power is the power of Christ’s own resurrection, which rules over your every enemy, in this life and all eternity… (1:20-22).
Through this resurrection power, we have been united together under His rule, and care, being built into a spiritual dwelling for God.
In short, Paul is saying, “in our journeying of knowing God, our inheritance is not a future hope only, but a present one as well. We have been raised to life by a power that destroys death. With this backdrop he then inscribes, “Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.. ” Eph 3:20.
What are you struggling with today? What powers, what instruments of the world seem to have dominion over your mind, your will, your heart? What habits sneak around in the corners of your mind, waiting to condemn and keep us in bondage? Our hope, according to scripture, is not to escape this life, and enter another free of temptation and turmoil. Our hope is rather to fix our heart’s gaze on our own individual and communal access to Christ’s resurrection power. This place, where “God put this power to work” (1:19), is not an annual event called Easter, it’s the believer’s foundation, it’s our experiential reality, a place of emancipation from sin’s power, from all that binds us, and keeps us from love’s liberty.
When I struggle to live freely in God’s perfect love, perhaps what I’m really lacking is a better imagination.
I have no problems imagining the frivolous , even the fleshly and selfish desires of the heart. Why can’t I imagine the capacity of the resurrection to instigate change, to renew and release my own heart? Paul goes to lengths in his writings to remind the reader that this power at work is not a humanly powered activity, but a free act of mercy, of God’s grace.
My prayer today is to be free in my imagination, to take on Paul’s challenge to see Christ’s resurrection power working in my “above and beyond all I can ask or imagine.” I believe this power adopts me into the fellowship of Christ’s church, but I need a wider, more lofty imagination. I need an imagination that experiences my inheritance, the power of release, liberty, and measureless love (Eph 3:16-19). We have been rescued from the domain of darkness, today, in my present reality.
Help us dear Savior to live into our glorious inheritance today with fresh imagination, and renewed minds.
We’re back in Cluj, reunited with Broderic’s family, and settling into another house. I’m grateful for a house, but the ongoing uncertainty and instability causes caution in the heart; don’t get too comfy. But I want to be settled!
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
James 4: 13-14
I’ve come to realize that some of us prefer thinking in the past, some are truly oriented in the present, while others find themselves constantly peering into the future. Do you have a preference? As more of a futurist, I’m learning the liberation of the present, but to remain there is no small task for many of us.
Upon arriving, I received a gift from a Ukrainian refugee friend. A pillow, with the words, “Home.”
My first thought was to give the pillow to one of my girls. It’s soft, and the girls adore the yellow and blue flag of their home country. But something inside me paused, a still small voice inside said, “This is for you, embrace it.” I resisted this at first, the combination of the Ukrainian flag and the word ‘home’ represents so much loss, for so many.
The pillow has found it’s place on my hopefully temporary single bed. It’s become at once a reminder of what’s been lost, and the universal longing of every heart, my heart.
Allowing myself to admit I’m unsettled, that I’ve lost the seeming capacity to futurize much of anything concretely, is an invitation to be present. The invitation, I think, is to trust God’s unfolding plans for us in the context of wherever we find ourselves. The opposite, as the verse continues, is to assert our future plans, to trust in them, without any reference to God’s intimate awareness and involvement in our lives.
Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
James 4: 15
An upended life, from whatever the cause, seems to set our hearts on a quiet (or not so quiet) pursuit of rootedness. I don’t want to spend a day more than I need to wondering where we should be living and putting down roots. Yet, here we are, uncertain and longing for home, a place to belong, to be known, and to know.
Today. We can, and should root in today, this moment. The sense of home is in the present, as much as love is. Can any of us actually love in the past or future? Home, as close as the hug of a pillow? To root in the present, I’m learning to let go of anticipated outcomes, at least the ones I believe will satisfy me if I wrestle them into the present.
We still plan. We still spend time envisioning a world that could be. Yet, we’re learning to lay them back down, as a offering of trust. Trusting with an open hand, a loosening grip. Trusting not in an outcome but the goodness of the One who made me, and joining the God who knows what it means to live in the suspended, trusting space. Trusting that this God, this Father, this Son, this Spirit, knows the deepest longings of my heart; the longing for the welcoming, belonging home. It’s hard to be present, where our disjointed temporal and eternal realities struggle to find resolve. It’s easier to reminisce, or look ahead, at least for me.
Being present, living for today, is to actively trust for an end to the war, an end to all of the separation, and grief abounding in too many hearts today. It’s to feel the weight of this moments reality, and yet, find the gift of Peace within the storm. I’m hugging that pillow, and learning that God’s goodness meets us in the most unlikely places when we’re needing a little reminder just how near He is.
I believe our Father knows this longing in each of us. I also believe the Spirit delights when we hug our hopes, while whispering, “Father, let your will be done.. in me, through me, and in the world that you love.”
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1
With the advent of the Internet and on-demand music, I’ve gotten into the habit of just listening to whatever song randomly pops in my head. The other day this little beauty, from 4Him, the Christian quarter-pop band from the 90’s… “Where there is faith…”
The chorus kept churning in my heart, it goes like this:
Where there is faith There is a voice calling, keep walking You’re not alone in this world Where there is faith There is a peace like a child sleeping Hope everlasting in He Who is able to bear every burden To heal every hurt in my heart It is a wonderful, powerful place Where there is faith
If you’d like to listen or watch the song – click here
As a young believer, faith was one of the first things discovered, taught and practiced. I believed, I trusted, I stood on promises. My faith in God was the proverbial mustard seed, something very small that quickly became transformative, infiltrating my life and becoming an essential part of my relationship with God. My faith re-interpreted the world around me and how I lived within it. My faith, like my emotional and physical maturity, has continued to form, to mature and deepen over the years.
Our faith is designed to take root, and hold on to what brings us the most life, stability and strength.
As a new believer, my root system spread out in a multiplicity of directions, clamoring for anything and everything that seemed to offer nutrients for my new relationship with God. All of us can look back, I’m sure, and recognize the things we first believed and first accepted from others. The more I read scripture for myself, and meditated on the life and teachings of Jesus, the more my faith found it’s primary root in the revealed personality and character of God.
Faith also, for me, moved from a focus on my own ability to embrace or believe these ideas or truths (although some of my truths needed a lot of reworking), to trusting in what God had already actualized in human history. In a very real sense faith moved from my faith, to a participation in the Christian faith. Faith started as a focus on positivity, more of a mental exercise , an avoidance of negativity. There were even times in my earlier journey that faith seemed to be more of a force, like a Star War’s like metaphysical woosh with the wave of a hand. Much of these faith roots have dissolved, been purposely hacked off, or at minimum taken a back seat and now serve as a supporting root in my faith journey.
Our faith evolves like the roots of a tree, and are continually looking to root in the most nourishing, sustainable places.
We live by faith, and we die by faith. Let’s consider where our root system is rooted!
Recently, I’ve been reading some posts from friends, and having some engaging discussions on the nature of faith. So many during this time of upheaval in the world, particularly for Ukrainians, are turning to God. In doing so, good folks are exercising and displaying in word and action various forms of faith. This post is a response to offering what I would encourage new believers to aim towards.
Our faith should be rooted, I believe, in three primary places for our souls to remain nourished, protected, and anchored in our journey through this world into the next. They are the life of Jesus, the suffering of Jesus, and the resurrection of Jesus.
I’ve found it helpful sometimes to define something through negation. So, I’d like to start with three questionable roots for our faith that while not necessarily erroneous, should not serve as the primary root substitutes as we each aim toward a mature root system in Jesus Christ.
Three Places Not to Root
Root #1: Faith is not believing everything is going to work out.
If I had a dollar for every time I read or heard, “все будет хорошо!” I would be rich man. It means everything will be OK! Well before the war, particularly among believers, and especially among the western charismatic influenced, believing and stating a situation is destined to work out is a sign of strong faith. To question, or to doubt, well that’s simply lack of faith.
This is essentially faith as optimism. Who doesn’t prefer to be around optimistic people? I try to be the glass half-full type most of the time. If I sneeze, and people look, I’ll smile and say, “Oh it’s just allergies” and hope that’s all it is. But, faith is not simply cheery optimism. Sometimes life is hard, unfair, it’s brokenness comes at us in waves, engulfing us physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Jesus never denied reality, nor asks His followers to do so. Often, in the face of suffering, new believers, or the religious types, utilize optimistic language as a way of diverting attention from the very real challenge, or even internal anxiety one is experiencing.
In a strange turn, this overly optimistic approach is ultimately a lack of genuine faith. It is at best a weak place to root our faith as it’s unwilling, and unable to work in the real world. It’s a faith in one’s own faith, ineffectual, and rooted in the person’s ability to remain positive.
Sometimes, as with all three of secondary roots, it can be quite fatalistic as well. It’s confessional in a sense, as if what’s happening in the present is not important and is void of any redemptive learning or growth. If one can just mentally ascend above and beyond the present situation, says the confessor, we’ll be protected from the realities we are facing.
Jesus entered our world, becoming materially human flesh. Like a rock, or a tree, or a blade of grass, you could touch him with your hands. He entered our time and space, our reality. This means God redeems from within, he’s not outside our reality, but enthused within it, now today through the Holy Spirit. In theological terms, this is called panenthesism; God within all things. He is in us, in our situation, present and near, waiting for us to find him even in our suffering. We need a better root system if we’re denying what’s smack in front of us in our daily lives, closing our eyes and clicking our heels like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, with, “There’s no place like home” claims.
Now, without qualifying ad-nauseam, I will say that we can all come to this place of believing “everything is going to be OK.” However, this is a result, a product, a grace that comes to each heart from something completely outside of oneself, namely, the work of Jesus on the Cross and his resurrection. I’ll get to that in a minute when we move to three healthy places to root our faith. For now, re-consider faith as simply being positive.
Sometimes the stronger, more mature faith is moving into fear and doubt, lamenting and asking, “God, where are you?”
Root #2: Faith is not believing God has a purpose for everything.
We’ve all said it, believed it, claimed it, trusted in it. Yet, I no longer believe that simply trusting in God’s providence, or extreme ideas of sovereignty is the place to primarily root our our faith. Usually, this statement is used when life doesn’t make sense, or when bad things happen. It’s supposed to be a badge of faith to throw one’s hands up and exclaim, “God’s ways are higher than mine” and default the situation to a hidden plan of God.
I will admit, trusting God when things aren’t making sense, can be beautiful, and an act of faith. I said can be. It can also be a blanket statement for pinning everything that is wrong in this world on God. Whether we realize it or not, it’s a hyper theological statement, and more accurately, a systematically driven statement to claim the doctrine of providence as faith. We may personally believe that God is working out a cosmic, detailed plan, down to the movement of every atom, but that isn’t a place to root our faith. At best, this is simply faith in our theological and philosophical framework. It may be right, but these roots don’t save, nor promise to secure us through life’s windy seasons.
The consistent, logical consequence of ascribing everything to God’s hidden purposes ultimately relegates evil to God, at some level. This is the catch 22 of holding providential consistencies too tightly. If the so called blessings are God’s plans, then so are the so called curses. By ascribing destruction, oppression, murder and all that we understand to be injustice to a working out of God’s perfect plan declares to the world that God is at best unloving, and at worst, the devil himself.
His ways are above ours, His thoughts far better, and they are good, loving, peace making and sacrificial.
We should be careful rooting our faith in theological streams, knowingly or unknowingly (why we need to study for ourselves) that elevate themselves over and above the revealed life of Jesus. When we do this, we run the danger of being idolatrous; creating mental models of a god that doesn’t exist but fits our vision of what we would like a god to be.
We may really dig the idea that God has a plan for everything, but rooting our faith there can cause even more questions when life truly falls apart. I believe that whatever the situation, God has the power to bring redemption from within it, from ashes produce beauty, from a cross produce a crown. This is much different than the temptation to blindly close our eyes to evil in our world while pinning it all on a divine playbook that ignores the character assignation we’re giving our loving, holy, and good Creator.
We can take refuge personally that no matter what the circumstance, God has the power to redeem and form us more into the image of Christ. Jesus interaction in the world, as we take the Gospels as a whole, reveal something very different than divine conspiracy at every turn, so we should find a better place to root our faith than, “God has a plan,” which most assuredly he does and his name is Jesus!
Root #3: Faith is not asserting, “God Knows”
Back to being a rich man for another infamous faith claim statement, “Бог знает.” The omniscience of God, his ‘all-knowing’ capabilities are surely part and parcel with the historic Christian faith, and I would be no means challenge that God doesn’t know all things. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. If God exists, created this universe and all that dwell within it, then God would be all knowing, easily, and without effort.
However, rooting in omniscience, much like omnipotence (all-powerful) isn’t necessarily the place to weather life’s storms, and find a place of nourishing. So what if God knows? He knows you have cancer? And? He knows your marriage if falling part, or you lost your job.. and? How does God’s knowledge of all things necessarily encourage your soul or root your faith? Think about it. If I, being a father, know that a disaster is about to fall upon my family, how does this encourage you to hold on and trust me? Would it not be my actions that flow from my character that reveal whether I’m trustworthy? Simply knowing, or simply having power, those are surely magnificent attributes one would expect from the Deity of the universe, but they don’t solicit a volitional, loving surrender and relational worship.
The same can be said for God’s power. God having the capacity to coerce or manipulate the cosmos without the loss of energy, this says nothing about the personality or character of God himself. He may as well be Zeus, or Thor for that matter.
God could be, for all those who take solace in primarily rooting in God’s knowledge or power, an egotistical, power hungry, angry jerk. It’s God’s loving action in the world that bring definition to these attributes, and solicit our love. Sometimes, the most callous thing someone can say in a time of suffering or loss, is “God knows.” At once someone is saying, “I think God knows and did nothing (or won’t) to help you in your time of need.” Without rooting in the life of Jesus, but simply clinging to theological attributes in God, we’re acting more like functional deists rather than Jesus followers.
In summary, when we root our faith in our own sense of optimism, ascribe everything to divine conspiracy, or God-like characteristics that may as well be any divine being without reference to a revealed personality, we can do more harm than good for others and ourselves. Life being what it is, there will come a time when our root system needs to grow, go deeper and find a lasting place that can weather the storms ahead. It needs to be focused on the person of Jesus, his life and work on the cross for humanity. Let’s review three good places to root our faith for the maturing believer.
What Christian Faith is
There will undoubtedly be evangelically formed believers reading that will turn to scripture for this definition. So I’ll quickly mention the most popular biblical definition:
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen
Hebrews 11:1
This is simply stating the nature of faith, but for Christians, we need to insert the object of our faith. We trust, we hope, as I’ve hinted at above, in something, and Someone outside of ourselves, namely, the Person of Jesus Christ.
What does this mean though?
Over the years, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve become increasingly, singularly focused on the revelation of Yah·weh. The incarnation is something so spectacularly outrageous, so central, so exclusive and defining. You see, it’s not about the nature of our OUR faith that’s critical, but rather where where we find ourselves aiming our faith.
I will outline three principles for securing a satisfying, transformative, and life-giving faith for the Christian. These come from my own journey, and are not meant to be exclusive but to simply go deeper for the new believers or religious that find themselves unsatisfied by their own faith as either self-generated optimism or cognitive adherence to doctrine.
Root #1 – Faith in the Life of Jesus
Jesus life spoke, it was his greatest sermon. He embodied the be-attitudes. This is important and missed by so many among the religious elite of the past and present. Humanity needs a Savior, but it was given so much more. More than simply coming to die, Jesus came to live. God, the Eternal Son, incarnated and walked this earth. God came into His own creation, among us, as one of us. Do you believe this? Is this part of your faith, truly?
If God was in Christ, when we read scripture, every word that flows from his lips is delivering both God’s instruction and expectation for His creation. If God was in Christ, all of our ideas of God, and the historical intellectual groping of humanity is brought into subjection against his life’s revealing.
I think of when our cars wheels go out of alignment, we take them to a tire center for service. Jesus is for us, the alignment center. Whatever malformed, out of whack ideas we have about the Creator are set against Jesus standard, his perfect revelation of the nature and character of God as Logos. (See Hebrews 1:1-3, Colossians 1:15-29, John 1:18).
So what is the primary revelation of the life of Jesus? What have the Old and New Testament ultimately worked towards revealing about God? This lead us to the second faith principle that brings satisfaction and life.
Faith #2 – Faith in the Suffering Jesus
If the loving life and teaching of Jesus wasn’t enough for humanity to catch the divesting (Gr. ἐκένωσεν – from Philippians 2:7), self-emptying heart of our Father, the events on the cross should seal it. Or you’d think!
The cross wasn’t simply an action that God initiated to atone for sins, as much as the Protestant Reformation would lead us believe. Throughout church history, followers of Jesus have been marked by the influence of God’s self-sacrificing nature. What actually occurred on the cross has been nuanced, parsed and debated since the earliest days of the church. What is not unclear, is that this Jesus, this God, lays down his life for humanity, at the hands of humanity!
The cross is a pattern for us to follow, and invitation. Faith is embracing what Jesus did for humanity, as humanity and allowing this event to crown the Father’s revelation project.
Jesus gets to define God, not theologians, pastors, or priests. We serve a God that looks like Jesus, and a faith rooted in the life and suffering of Jesus is a place where we lay down our arms, willingly, gratefully, and embrace the fullness of the character of God. For many, myself included, we’ve wrestled with the harshness of the Jewish scriptures, the God of Israel, Isaac, and Jacob.
We see Jesus, the long awaited Messiah, on scene, finally, and his loving, sacrificing way destroys our rebellion if we allow it. Faith, then, is rooted in the life of Jesus goodness, and brought to full definition through the Cross. The life of the faith-filled believer never ceases to plunge the depths of these truths, and these truths never cease to shape our relationship with the God of the universe.
The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight.
Phillips Brooks (1868)
Faith #3 – Faith in the Resurrection and it’s Promise
Finally, then we find ourselves at the blessed hope, the resurrection. Jesus not only reveals the Father for us, but invites us to participate and join in His undying, eternal love! Our faith would be useless, a fools errand had not Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus resurrection is what has held the Christian faith together since the first century.
Hope is rooted, then, not in our capacity to initiate enough faith. Faith is a gift, but doesn’t itself have the capacity to do anything on it’s own. It’s Jesus life, his cross, and his resurrection that emphatically stamps a Creator’s finished work for humanity. It’s believing that God told the truth, became the truth visible for us that saves us (Rom 10:9 etc). Jesus was moved by those that believed his words were true, and put their trust in his origins.
Trusting in God’s resurrection is a trust in personal participation and union with God for eternity. If Jesus rose, we’ll rise. This life is temporal, but we’re now united in the Father, Son’s and Spirit’s ongoing love that is life.
In Conclusion
I set out to share what I consider to be a satisfying faith. God wants us to believe in the right things. When we place our faith in ourselves, or attributes of God that aren’t clearly reveled in Jesus life and work, we’re more likely just being superstitious.
He wants us to cling to his heart, his promise, and not anxiously repeat silly things, deny the harshness of reality, or place too much emphasis on a particular attribute of God. These things may be helpful, and even bring temporary relief, but there’s nothing that can substitute for the joys of resting in the covenant keeping promise of our loving God in Christ. Over time, I believe our root system looks deep and wide, with auxiliary networks and support systems. Much like the forest itself, there’s more going on below than we could ever imagine.
Even the faith roots from the previous generations are linked, supporting, and giving us identity and meaning through the lineage of God’s people across time, space and culture. We, the followers of Jesus Christ, the resurrected Son, the image of the invisible God, we are participating in the life of God and bringing this life to our world. We take his nourishment in, his goodness, and love. When the wind blows, when the water dries up from above, our deep roots in the love of God hold us firmly, protect us and continue to produce fruit for others.
Life is hard, and we’re all wrestling through battles, and for some even physical war! It’s always a time to surrender to the love that is in Jesus, and place our hope in ultimate beauty, that is, the Person of God. May your faith roots continue to reach for Him, and find rest in his finished work.
