Prayer: Father, when there seems to be no hope, when someone I know is in despair, may I be the one who brings Hope to them. Amen.
Reading: Job 17 key: vs. 1 & 15
“My spirit is broken, my days have cut short,
the graveyard awaits me.
15 where then is my hope?
And my hope, who sees it?
Attention: There is a special niche of people who are despairing today. They are called the elderly. They are our parents and grandparents. We do not hear their despair or see their agony. In our culture they are hidden and isolated. Their world shrinks from independency, to assisted, to palliative care.
Never has this progression and isolation been more exposed than during the lockdowns of 2020. We were prevented from comforting our loved ones. They died in solitary confinement.
Job is expressing his heart cry in today’s reading. “My spirit is broken, my days have cut short, the graveyard awaits me.” He anticipates that death is imminent and there is not hope. His friends bring no words of comfort, they bring no hope beyond the grave.
I have a friend who lost her mother recently. She and her siblings covenanted together to take turns in the final months of her life, to be at her side. This she did during the lock down with the added challenge of living in another state.
Numerous families are separated geographically from each other and not able financially to be there at the time of need. Scores of families are fractured and disenfranchised. There is a huge need for people who have the gift of compassion and know the Lord, to bring hope and comfort to the hopeless.
If you do not have a purpose and have not found your purpose, please consider being a hope bringer and hope giver. There is great need.
Action: I will be a bringer and giver of hope, comfort, and compassion today!
Yield: I am God’s instrument of hope, comfort, and compassion.
Engage: When I am giving others hope, comfort, and compassion, I am being Jesus.
Relationship: My lifestyle is loving God and loving others.
Prayer: Father, may I see the hopeless and despairing and not walk past them. May I go to them and not require them to come to me. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Memory Verse: Matthew 25:40
40 “And answering, the King will say to them, ‘Amen, I tell you, whatever you did to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
Music Video: Phil Wickham—Living Hope
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!”