Monday, October 13, 2008

Hope and a future

Today has been a rough one, for whatever reason. I found myself thinking of Meg quite a bit, and realizing how much I miss her and how much I still love her. And accompanying that is the strong desire to be married, which is always slightly present, but today was very strong.

I went to a writing conference this weekend that was excellent, and one thing one of the speakers wrote about was the difficult phase in the middle of any creative work. It's often challenging and painful. She mentioned that she usually gets a little depressed when she's in the hard middle of it. I thought of the words of Christ in John that I read recently, "A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy."

I have become convinced that this book is something that I need to give birth to, and indeed that I am in the midst of the birthing pains. It's to be expected, and indeed embraced as necessary for the completion of the task before me.

And here is a small sign of the little mercies of God. As I was seeking that verse above on my usual online Bible website, I noticed the "verse of the day," which I include in a picture below.


I don't think I've ever noticed the "verse of the day" at this website that I go to quite often, but I recently asked God for a sign of encouragement, a little help along the way. I know a lot of people will look at that verse today and say, "Yup...that's a wonderful reminder of the promises of God." I don't think anyone will cling to it quite so strongly as me today however.

2 comments:

Fred said...

Beautiful. Thank you.

Dan said...

Thanks for swinging by my blog Fred!