The year-2014

 We are about to embark on a journey into 2014!

 Every journey needs preparation and provisions. What have we got for this journey!

Let me suggest that we carry hope as our main stay for this journey. 

In one sense, hope is so real that it can lift our spirit from any sense of despair or self-resignation. A farmer sows or plants, waters manures and tends…he does all of these in the hope that he would be able to gather fruits of his labour. We exercise this hope so many times in a day in so many ways. Every time I sit in the driver’s seat of a car, what sustains my spirit is the hope of safe travel and good arrival. 

I experienced recently how hope can revive a languishing spirit. When I was told in September 9th, 2013, by the cardiologist that I had a heart disease which needed a coronary by pass surgery, I did feel anxious and unsettled. Although I was told that complications are uncommon and risk to life was less than 0.5 percent, I had recurring periods of anxiety till the day before surgery. All the members of my family sat around my bed and prayed to revive my hope. That was when, I felt hopeful of being carried through this valley experience. After the operation, during the stay in the intensive care unit, I felt well and recovered progressively. The speed of my recovery surprised me even. 

I want to testify that hope is what sustains our spirit to overcome because hope is based on the reality of God, who does all things well. It is God who turns disappointments into a blessing and joyous occasion into a transforming experience.

If we can be messengers of this hope, which can never die, as long as, ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, it will inspire some in the year 2014!

I like the hymn of faith of Habakuk, ‘Though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the labour of the olive may fall, and the fields yield no food; though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls- yet I will rejoice in the Lord..’(Hab.3:17). 

A hope that stays in the reality of God and not on the sifting circumstances!

M.C.Mathew (text and photo)