Hard! Hard! Hard!
Those are the words which stand out for me from this year.
Hard being locked-down; hard facing sorrow and suffering; hard coping with loneliness and separation from loved ones; hard navigating our way round all that the year has brought! Just hard!
And yet ..
And yet, I do want to finish off the year with thanksgiving, for through it all God has been there. If ever we have needed a steadfast, strong, reliable God it has been this year and His faithfulness has remained.
So through the hard, God has been in control; through the hard God has remained faithful; Through the hard God has still blessed, still provided, still looked upon us and has brought us through and so I give thanks.
Psalm 65, verse 11 says:
You crown the year with a bountiful harvest;
even the hard pathways overflow with abundance.
Through the hard our pathways still overflow with abundance, our pathways have still been overseen by God in His kindness and goodness, He has not entirely wiped us out, He has still blessed.
Through the hard we have had to seek God harder in ways perhaps we haven’t done before, we have had to press in harder, pray harder and read our bibles harder, but those things have reaped for us a spiritual blessing and this is why at the end of this hard year we can return thanks to God and acknowledge that He has ‘crowned the year with a bountiful harvest’.
So through the hard I will give thanks; through the storm I’ll praise His Name!
[Sharing this post I wrote for my Church’s Facebook Post]
Finding God in the Everyday 