Tag: my part

Find freedom in faith

But God’s faithfulness never ends May 29, 2025

Galatians 5:22-23 But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith [many translations say faithfulness instead of faith], gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Lamentations 3:22-23 The faithful love [hesed] of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.

“Great is Thy Faithfulness,” we sang at my dad’s funeral, his favorite hymn. “Morning by morning, new mercies I see.” God’s faithfulness anchored him through incredible challenges and trials, even through failures.

And Dad’s death was just the beginning of his story. After his death, we sibs let our imaginations fly as we pictured him in Heaven with all the time in the world to indulge his many passions and interests. Why could we do this? Because God’s faithfulness is ETERNAL. It doesn’t stop here.

“One day at a time” has been my instinctive response when people ask me how I survived the Karis years. “Sometimes one hour at a time. Counting on God’s faithfulness, his manna for this one day.” Thinking about an elusive “tomorrow” was too overwhelming. I gripped God’s faithfulness for this moment, this challenge. And then the next one. I lived this way for 30+ years.

Karis’s move to Heaven–I’m so curious about what she’s been up to there in her ongoing experience of God-s faithfulness!–didn’t automatically change me. Living intensively in the present, without margin in my life for worrying about the future, became so habitual that for better or worse, it’s with me still. I’m able to engage with this morning, or today—maybe that stretches out now to thinking about this week. But I plan for and set personal longer term objectives in only the vaguest of terms, such as “I want to publish three books this year, so I’ll have them to take to homeschool conventions next spring.”

(Unless I see that my lack of planning will negatively impact others. That somehow feels different, requiring more detailed attention to “how” something could be done.)

“How exactly will you accomplish this?” my husband asks of my vague desires. He wants a Plan, as do our mission leaders. I’m immediately flooded with stress and a compulsion to retreat, to give the whole thing up. I think, “If God wants me to do this, he’ll show me how.” But my ideas about what I want to do aren’t the most important thing. I need to stay flexible to understand what God is asking of me on any given day.

Is that the kind of faith Paul is talking about? Or is it irresponsibility; just an excuse handily available (principally to myself) if I don’t reach my “goals”? The jury is out.

Vine’s says pistis, the word Paul uses in Galatians 5:22, is used in the New Testament always of faith in God or Christ. It’s not faith in myself or faith in other people or circumstances. It’s not even faith in God’s promises. It’s persistent trust in God’s faithfulness, rooted in personal surrender to him, himself.

For me, this is freedom. It’s not all up to me. The weight of the world is on HIS shoulders, not mine. I just have to do my wee part.

Here’s the cool thing: even faith in God’s faithfulness is not something I have to generate. It’s something the Spirit produces in me.

My part is giving him space in my soul to do his work. And then letting his faithfulness motivate me to live faithfully.

Faith and Wonder, Meredith Andrews

Don’t you long to see the blooms and fruit?

But God’s righteousness will be like a garden in early spring 

Isaiah 61:11 The Sovereign Lord will show his justice to the nations of the world. Everyone will praise him! His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring, with plants springing up everywhere.

Crocuses by our front steps last spring

It’s a gorgeous sunny day in Pittsburgh, so I’m not surprised to read that Punxsutawney Phil has seen his shadow and predicts six more weeks of winter. In fact, along with a wide swath of middle and northeast America, a winter storm warning flashes on my screen for tomorrow and Friday, while United warns me our flight to Houston Friday may be cancelled. What a wise groundhog! Haha. To be fair, Phil has only been right 40% of the time since he began making weather predictions in 1887. (Yes—according to Groundhog Day lore, this very same huge groundhog has been alive and prophesying since the 19th century!)

Though spring may (or may not) take a little longer to show itself this year, we know it will come. Once again, we’ll be able to walk out the doors of our homes without the fuss of snow boots, hats and scarves, heavy coats and thick gloves. Our cars will no longer slide on the ice. We’ll no longer fight the temptation to huddle up at home instead of going out to exercise when the temperatures are in the teens. We’ll no longer lament the beautiful snow turning dirty and icky from traffic and snowplows.

Instead, multi-hued crocuses, snowdrops and hyacinths will pop their heads through the snow and perfume the warming air. We know this will happen in our city.

So, reading much-loved Isaiah 61 this morning, I was struck by the verse quoted above, and the word “will” repeated three times: The Lord will show his justice to the world. Everyone will praise him. His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring.

The plants springing up everywhere will come from seeds and bulbs planted before the winter, I muse. They will be stronger, their blooms brighter, because winter gave their roots time to grow deep. Suddenly I don’t mind the idea of six more weeks of winter. I want my perennials to have time to grow stronger before they pour their resources into blooms and fruit.

And then I wonder what God may be growing inside me through the “winter” of Covid. No, I don’t want it to last one second longer! But, as long as it’s with us, I’m asking the Lord to grow my emotional and spiritual roots deep. To surprise me with “plants springing up everywhere” when we’re through and out the other side of this long trial, and all the others the world faces now.

What good seeds have been planted in your life—their blooms and fruit not yet visible? Can you picture their roots growing strong in this season of “winter” around the world, no matter the external and internal weather where you live? Don’t you long to see the Lord’s justice and righteousness?

What is my part?

God of justice, fill us up, send us out.