Uphold me according to your promise, that I may live, and let me not be put to shame in my hope! Psalm 119.118 I guess lots of the thoughts in these posts recently have been about hope. Throughout the Bible, there are so many people who depend on their hope in God’s promise of a good life, a long life, productive fields, good weather, idyllic peacefulness... (like that depicted above). They believed that if they lived faithfully to the ways God had told them to live, God would be faithful to them to, in the form of the promised goodness and blessing they’d been covenanted.
In some respects, this is why I live in some of the ways I choose to live too. I believe God has given us insights into practices and ways to try and live that benefit us, those our lives affect and the planet we live on. This is why I eat a mostly vegetarian diet, why I don’t drink caffeine or alcohol, and why I set my life around a rhythm of weekly rest. It’s also why I do (nearly) regular exercise, choose to give away a percentage of what I earn and try to be kind and generous to the other people in my life. Of course, there are ways I could do better - some days I eat too many Skittles, for example! Sometimes I don’t feel like being kind, and want all my time for myself. Some weeks exercise is slow and painful or boring or just too much effort! But I try. And just like people in the Bible - they realised that even sometimes when they were trying really hard to live in all the right ways, it could never guarantee the idyllic, perfect life they’d been promised. And on those days, they - like I - found God’s promise true still, but yet unfulfilled. And they kept hope in its future fulfilment. Crying out to God, “...and let me not be put to shame in my hope!” Interestingly (to me, anyway!), there is at least some benefit starting to be seen in trying to make health choices in line with biblical principles. There were some studies a little while back called The Blue Zone Studies, which featured Seventh-Day Adventists as some of the people who live the longest, which it puts down to our ”discouragement of eating meat, rich foods, caffeinated drinks and ‘stimulating’ condiments and spices” (whatever they are, lol!). God has promised good things. And in my life, I have known numerous times when God has followed through on that promise. I have also known times when it’s certainly felt like those promises had been abandoned, only to realise later that they were still there, ready to give me new hope precisely when I needed it most. That’s life! This is what the Bible shows - through good times, and through droughts, through joyful dances, and laments, God is there and gives us purpose and direction in how to live in line with the hope we have been given. Hope of what is perfect; hope of painless, fear-less, stress-less good! So we pray, and we hope! As always, stay safe, and take care!
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AuthorI'm a recent Cambridge Theology graduate now studying for a Masters in Biblical Studies and blogging about all sorts of things! I'm interested in faith, Church, theology, social action, the great outdoors and being creative, and all of those things - along with many more - come through in my posts!
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