30 Days with the word – January 11

30 Days with THE WORD
January 11, 2021

John 1:1-2, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. He (the Word) was in the beginning with God (NKJV).’

What a week we have all just walked through! What a year just past. It is so human for us to find the next best thing to fix our gaze on when what is in front of us is defunct. We replace or dispose of all that feels deficient and 2020 was no different. It quickly became very evident that the year wasn’t turning into what we had envisioned and just as quickly we looked ahead to a new year, a new view. So here we are—Welcome to 2021!—and the perspective last week was pretty dismal.

I admit, I sat in awe and horror Wednesday evening and watched the rampage of what I never thought possible in my great United States of America. I thought I was watching a movie, a good American drama, and had to repeatedly remind myself, this is real life; this is what we have been diminished to. I then awoke the next morning and reached for the remote so I could see how bloody the war became overnight and who had overtaken who. Dozens of pieces of what ifs and how comes ran through my mind and I felt my heart rise in my throat again. My hope felt threatened, and my significance, suffocated.

Before I could press the ON button, the Word reminded me, from Isaiah 26:3, ‘You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You (NKLV).’ There is an enemy of our soul that is slick and sneaky; he wants to rob from us our stillness before our God. It doesn’t take much either, does it? A couple newscasts or social yapping or rummaging through the pages and flipping through the channels is about all that is necessary to strip us of our grounding. But God says, perfect peace, even in the midst of tumultuous times, can be ours. It does require something of us, settling our minds and our trust on Him, but it is available to those who seek Him instead of cower at the threat from the enemy.

Furthermore, we are encouraged by the Word to ‘Be still and know that I am God’ (Psalm 46:10, NKJV), or like the Passion Translation encourages, ‘Surrender your anxiety! Be silent and stop your striving and you will see that I am God!’ I can rest, no matter what circumstances hold, because in Him is found perfect peace, and every reason to be still in the face of uncertainty.