Verse of the Day 11/10

Through the Bible - Lamentations 5- Ezekiel 1, Hebrews 9   Good morning, I don't know what it was like in your part of the world this past weekend but it was a perfect fall weekend in North Carolina.  We enjoyed the fresh air and sunshine and had the opportunity to see Jeff go horseback riding at Koppertop. It was kind of surreal watching  the sun filtering through the branches of a huge tree, feeling the warmth of the sun on a fall day.  The tree was probably  6 feet or more in diameter and as I sat there I thought "if that tree had eyes what would it have seen" over the course of 150 years, back to the civil war days.  I watched Jeff ride a horse just as someone else may have watched their son from that vantage point 150 years ago.    What would that person have hoped for, what do I hope for?   In yesterday's devotional we considered how Jesus came to earth, reaching us where we are to save us to the uttermost.  Today we'll consider what it means for us to have a God who also sees the whole picture.  He knows what has gone before us and what will happen after us.  He was there before the old tree was a sapling  and will be there at the end of time as we know it with or without global warming.  It gives us great hope and confidence to read verses like we read recently in Jeremiah when God the Father told us that we have a "hope and a future in God."   Jer 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. 12 Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you.   NKJV For today's verse we'll go to Hebrews 8 for a similar future promise.   Heb 8:10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.  11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.   NKJV The law in the Old Testament, the Old Covenant was primarily external, but the New Covenanat spoken of here is internal.  It is written on our hearts and will live within our hearts inspiring hope towards a future in Jesus Christ, our King.    Go back in time to, say, 1860, to a slave sitting under that same tree mentioned earlier.  Where was his hope?   Where was the hope of the country?  In a coming president? Where was the hope  In my darkest hours where was my hope for Jeff?  In a doctor, in a miracle cure?  Where is the hope in this nation that is involved in war and economic uncertainty?  It is not in a president or congress, my hope our hope is in God, and that we may know Him better.   Chuck Colson states, "Where is the hope? I meet millions of people who feel demoralized by the decay around us. The hope that each of us has is not in who governs us, or what laws we pass, or what great things we do as a nation. Our hope is in the power of God working through the hearts of people. And that's where our hope is in this country. And that's where our hope is in life."   Without Christ there is no true comfort or hope for the future.  Christ's death for us and His promise to return give us a bright hope for tomorrow.  (Lam. 3:22-24).  Great is His faithfulness.  Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.  Don't we all need that? In Christ, Mike   Heb 8:7-9:1 A New Covenant (Jer 31:31-34) 7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah —   9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.  10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.  11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.  12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."  13 In that He says, "A new covenant," He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.    NKJV