It is the end of another year and she is once again alone and disappointed. Her anxiety level is through the roof. The brutality of the 2020 pandemic has left her, and everyone else, afraid and uncertain about the future. For the first time in a long time, she feels any God that might have existed has long since left the building. He too is disappointed in His creations, or maybe just indifferent altogether. Bored, probably, at the redundancy of their inhumanity toward one another. Who among them has any capacity for love left in their hearts after the savageness of the political events this past year.
Abraham asked God, “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked?... Far be it from you to do such a thing – to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” God assured his servant Abraham that He would not destroy a city if even ten righteous could be found among its inhabitants (Genesis 18:23-33). Thus, with the boldness of her father Abraham, she implores the God of all creation not to destroy all his people based on the wickedness of a few, or more accurately, the many.
There are plenty of God’s own who still believe in His wondrous power and the salvation for humanity secured by Jesus Christ. Although a mere mortal would indeed rob God, she believes there are enough of the righteous who would bring their whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in God’s house. She and her peers will test the Lord Almighty in this and see if He will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it (Malachi 3:8-10).
There may indeed be disappointment in her heart at the end of yet another turbulent year, but her faith restores her strength to greet the coming year with hope. God has not left his people alone. He still reigns in the Heavens and over all the earth. May those who still believe open their hearts and their hands to let go of the earthly treasures they cling to in desperation, to receive the goodness and bounty from God’s overflowing provision.
© 2020 Erin Lynn Hopkins