In our last blog article of 2020, we remarked how many were wishing 2020 away and looking forward to 2021. We further remarked that we should be careful what we wish for. Adversity, discord, sickness, and other problems would not (and did not) magically disappear at the stroke of midnight on December 31, 2020.
While 2020 most certainly had an abundance of struggles and sadness and 2021 may as well; those of us who are Christians should remember that our hope is not in any year but in our sovereign God. The changing of a year or month or week or day does not necessarily change circumstances or give us joy and peace. Afterall, there were struggles and sorrow before the pandemic.
It is human nature to hope and believe that another day will change our circumstances rather than trusting God in all circumstances. Realistically, the end of the pandemic, a new year, or vaccines will not necessarily provide jobs, financial provision, health, and happiness. But take heart, though our plans may be overturned, God has not stopped His work, Job 42:2 says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
In 2021, let us put our hope in the one whose plans cannot be thwarted by a health crisis, famine, the wickedness of men, or natural disaster. He is our true contentment and joy. To trust and hope in anything else is futile and fleeting. The Lord tell us in Jeremiah 2:13, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.”
In Bible times, a cistern was an artificial reservoir which was dug in the earth or a rock for the collection of water. But a broken cistern was essentially useless in that it could only hold a small amount of dirty water, or none at all. Collecting and storing water in a broken cistern was foolish.
And so, it is with us today. We can choose to seek satisfaction in our own futile ways or seek life and satisfaction in our Lord God, the spring of pure, perfect, living water. Jesus says in John 4:14, “whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Be encouraged that whatever we may face, there is always hope and peace to be had when we choose the living water, our God Almighty. He loves us with an everlasting love and has not left us and He is still in control.