The Promise

The Promise

Can you see it?

When life swirls and hurls and feels out of control and we’ve lost our ability to even care, what in the world are we to do?

Remember the promises.

Lay hold of them.  Lay our hand upon the Truth and let that Truth seep deep into every fiber of our being.  Lay hands upon the rock solid, unchanging, ever present, steadfast promises of God.  The ones given in His Word and the ones written on our hearts and the ones whispered in the dark.  Remember them, meditate upon them, breath them in. 

NO thing is impossible for our God.  Did you hear that?  How many times have you said that very phrase?  But how many times have you actually dared to believe it, dared to act on it?

You see, there was this girl.  She had her heart set on going to the Holy Land.  Some may call it part of a bucket list.  This was the only thing in this girl’s bucket!  Problem was she was an ordinary girl, living an ordinary life, who grew up to be ordinary with ordinary job, ordinary income and responsibilities.  It was a pipe dream.  Something she never really dared to let herself think about, just a far off hope she’d voiced once in awhile.  If she’d have known how God would bring it about she’d surely have balked, declining, tossing her dream away as a seeming sacrifice.  But as He is, He knows, so He didn’t tell her, all the while He was working…

Then one day, this ordinary girl gets an extraordinary call.  So overwhelmed at the goodness of God that she cries, feeling so unworthy. No, she’s not going to the Holy Land, yet.  She’s on the first of many steps toward it, and she doesn’t even know it…  Years later a spontaneous wishful pact is made.  “If ever we get a chance to go, you & I will be roomies.”  (Oh, if we only truly understood the power of our words….)  Then tragedy strikes, and it seems as if every dream is shattered, even the basest expectations, let alone a pipe dream….  And as life is, it goes on.  And all the whole while the Master is at work, unseen, but working nonetheless.  And tragedy upon tragedy ensue, and still He works.  And the ordinary girl becomes an ordinary woman who feels older than her years and the dream’s so forgotten that dust shrouds it completely.  And all the while He works.

This ordinary woman learns an extraordinary thing.  She learns to be still and listen for God's voice!  And as she does, she realizes that He’s been making promises to her and fulfilling them one by one by one.  So, in a courageous moment, she digs furiously through the dust to free the dream of long ago and in that moment she dares to believe that maybe, just maybe, He may make a way.  And I’m sure He laughed.  Because all the while He’d been placing just the right person at just the right time with just the right resources with just the right need and even using tragedy for good, to provide and to give her courage…  And it all came together at just the right moment, as her feet touched the soil of the Holy Land she’d dreamed of visiting some forty plus years before…

Do you see it?

That’s my hand.  Laid fast upon the promise. Upon the inside of the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. Where my Savior will one day return.  The very gate that’s been walled in.  Oh, not a single little row of stones.  No filled in with tons of stones, then barricaded with tombs in the evil one’s efforts to keep Jesus from returning as He said He would.  Through the Golden Gate.  Ah, but the efforts are in vain.  No one can thwart the will of God!  See my hand on this wall?  I had to take this picture in secret in a quick minute while the guard had his back turned.  I didn’t get to frame the shot, just snap and hope for the best. 

Do you see it?

An ordinary plant growing through that sealed up wall?  Oh, how it makes me laugh!  Brings fresh hope to my soul!  If they can’t even keep a little plant from growing in this sealed up wall, where there is no soil or source of water, yet it has broken that seal, how in the world can they keep the King of Kings and LORD of Lords from entering in!

An ordinary plant and an ordinary woman.  Side by side in a most extraordinary place.  One a reminder of The Promise coming, one a living out a dream fulfilled by the Promise Himself.