Listen

Lord, change our circumstances for the better, like dry streams in the desert waste!

Let those who plant with tears reap the harvest with joyful shouts.

Let those who go out, crying and carrying their seed, come home with joyful shouts, carrying bales of grain!

Psalm 126:4-6

Think

This entire week’s scriptures have been about hope: hope that provides for tomorrow, hope that drives us forward, hope that keeps us from looking back because we believe that what is before us is better than what is behind us. It has been about the hope that sacrifice and death are never the last words.

As people of faith, ours is a story that does not culminate with deserts, dry river beds, or crosses on mountains but rather finds fulfillment early in the morning with a lush dew-covered garden and an empty tomb.

My prayer for all of us is that we will live in that hope and remember that when our God calls us to follow The Way, our God provides a way.

Stephen Ingram

Pray

God, thank you for creating life where there was death.

Thank you for taking what was hopeless and telling a new story, a story of renewal and resurrection.

Thank you that I am one of those stories and that you are not finished telling my story.

Amen.

Go

Ere we reach the shining river,
Lay we ev’ry burden down;
Grace our spirits will deliver,
And provide a robe and crown.

Yes, we’ll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.

Robert Lowry in “Shall We Gather at the River?” (1864)