HOPE IN TROUBLING TIMES

The anxieties, fears and uncertainties in our world make our own troubles worse. Image credit: *KHALED ALI* on Unsplash.

By REVEREND TONY ZEKVELD

We live in troubling times. The anxieties, fears and uncertainties of the downward spiralling economies, gunfire on our streets and unending wars in our world make our own troubles worse.

Will I be working tomorrow? Will I be able to make my mortgage payments? Are my children safe on the streets and at school? And what about the future of healthcare?

These, and many others besides, easily shake our confidence as we are caught in a sea of chaos, a morass of unknowns, in the absence of any obvious design. We restlessly wander from point to point, and who knows when and where it ends! There’s no anchor!

But the good news is that the whole world is in God’s hands. He rules it because He made it. He is just, He is good. And all things, every detail, are under His direction and control.

Yes, sinful actions of men bring chaos, but God is working out all things according to His plan and purpose. The earth continues to spin on its axis revolving around the sun. The sun rises and sets each day. The seasons are fixed by His design. Observe the order, the beauty, but mankind, through his sin, brings disorder and disarray into His world.

I remember having a rug pattern on our wall. That pattern was a squirrel on a tree branch. On the back was a chaos of coloured threads, having no pattern or design whatsoever. Yet the artist was working with purpose and crafting a beautiful design on the front!

Likewise, we will only see God’s glorious purpose when we trust in Christ, whom He sent into the world, to remedy human rebellion and restore beauty and order in our lives. Through His death and resurrection, He brings order, even into our lives.

But we need to be anchored in Jesus. Without Him as our anchor in times of trouble we see only darkness, no light. About Jesus, the Bible calls us to “lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast...”

Corrie ten Boom, a survivor of the concentration camps in Germany, puts it well: “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look to Christ you’ll be at rest.”

Jesus is our hope, sure and steadfast, in troubling times!

HOPE TRIUMPHS

HOPE IN TROUBLING TIMES