Behold!
Jan 01, 2009I wish you all a Happy New Year, on this first day of 2009!
All throughout the Scriptures, this word ‘Behold’ is used. This word can be translated from the original languages as, “Look” or “Pay Attention” or “See!” It’s a marker of emphasis, calling people to focus or center one’s mind on what’s about to happen next.
In Genesis, God gives every herb and plant in the beautiful, perfect world to the man and woman at the beginning of the creation and says, behold.
In Exodus, God says to Moses, behold the cry of the Israelites, my people who are in slavery. Look… pay attention… see their suffering.
In Isaiah 43, God says, behold the new thing I am doing among you. In the wilderness a straight path is being marked out. Pay attention to this work I am doing.
In Matthew 1, God says, behold a virgin will conceive and you will call his name Emmanuel, God with us. He will forgive his people from their sins.
At the start of this new year I want to encourage you to behold. Look. See. Pay Attention. To what God is doing in your midst. To the good gifts he brings, to the way your cries are answered, to the way he makes for you where there was no way.
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.
Jules Renard
I encourage you to make notes, physically record the ways/miracles/events/happenings as you see God work this year. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a text document on your computer or a simple notebook where you write the ways God is working. By this time next year you can look back and read all the many ways you beheld the Almighty God at work.
This year, I encourage you and I to behold, to truly see, the amazing works of God in our world.
-Pastor Tara VinCross
Change
Jan 25, 2009“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.”
– Dale Carnegie
Isn’t this the truth?
We all hope to be there (wherever there is for each one of us)… to arrive. Yet, on the journey towards that goal there are unexpected stops, things that waylay us and circumstances that don’t cooperate with our plans.
To each of you who are struggling – with health issues, with job loss, with difficult relationships, with budgets that just won’t balance – remember this promise:
“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” *
By the phrase, “Until the day of Christ Jesus” we understand that apparently God is clear on something we often forget: change takes time. Patience means, “to accept or tolerate delay.” Maybe that’s why it’s listed among the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5. It doesn’t come natural to us, but is something Supernatural that happens when God comes and lives in us.
Being a Christ follower means seeing redemption in every situation, in every person, in every relationship, realizing that all the way up to “the day of Christ Jesus” God is working change in us and in everyone around us.
In order to be a force for good for the Kingdom of God in the world, we must persist even when the natural temptation is to give up. We must press on, despite delay. In hope, in belief, that God is at work, even in the situation you’re facing now.
Change takes time. May you and I have the grace, the hope and the patience to press on.
- Pastor Tara VinCross
- Philippians 1:6
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