Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
The calendar rolled over to 2018 at midnight…we have a new year! I like new beginnings — it energizes me to start afresh and move forward. I’m not one to look back much, for a couple of reasons. One, it can be depressing. Two, you can’t change anything that happened. All those woulda, coulda, shoulda dates written in over the months can sometimes be painful reminders of things done or undone.
My word for the year is “faith.” As I pondered and prayed about what word to focus on, faith kept coming up. But I wondered how it differed from hope, my word from another year. Google gave me some insight and it always referred back to the source as the object of our faith. As Christians, that source is God — the beginning of it all. Faith in Him is the way forward.
One way to lend some understanding is: My son promises his two little girls a trip to Disneyland. They have faith (or trust) in their dad to keep his word because he has done so in the past. But they have hope as they look forward to this new and exciting adventure.
As I look over my calendar for 2018, I can plug in a few dates which give me something to look forward to. But those hopes and dreams may change if God chooses to take me on another path. And that is where the faith comes in. It may not be where I want to go, the people I want to go with, or the mode of transportation. But faith allows me to trust my Heavenly Father to take care of His daughter and and I will follow Him.
I wonder what adventures we will take this year?