Dear Friends,
“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” Hebrews 11:1 (NLT)
Christian pastor and author Max Lucado, in his book Grace for the Moment defined faith as “a conviction that He can and a hope that He will.” Now I have never had a problem believing that God can; it’s that “hope that He will” part can be a challenge. Recently I was working on a project that involved rewriting a 98 page training manual. The project carried over several days so I was careful to save my work regularly.
As I was finishing up on the third day of the project, I saved my work and closed my word processing program. About an hour later I decided to edit the document. When I tried to open it, I discovered that I had somehow saved something else over it by accident. All of my work was gone. When Bonnie heard my loud, “Oh NO!” She entered my office to see me sitting dejected with my head in my hands. “I think we should pray, she said.
“Right now I don’t feel very much like praying,” I responded; nevertheless, she took my hand and we prayed. After she left the room, I tried everything I could think of to retrieve the lost file, but it was hopeless.
Bonnie had to run an errand, so she left me in my despair. She had only been gone for about twenty minutes when my phone rang. It was Bonnie. “It’s in ‘the Cloud’, she exclaimed.”
I had already checked that option, so I thanked her for her suggestion and decided to pull up the original notes for the project to start all over. Three days of work gone!
But, when I started to read, I discovered that instead of the old document that I was expecting and dreading to see, I was reading the document I thought was lost. As we read in Hebrews, “faith… gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” The answer to my dilemma was not in “the Cloud”; I have faith it was beyond the clouds. Thanks be to God.
Verse for the week: Psalm 36:5
“Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens; your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.”
Blessings, Your Friends in Christ
Because He Loves Us Press 