Love

We lit our love candle tonight. A day late due to sick kiddos. We sat around the table after a day of frustration and fighting. A day where everything that could have went wrong seemed to do so. It has been a long week not lacking in disappointments. Why is it when we need love the most it is sometimes the last thing we reach for?

So we sit in the candlelight and read the words. His promises of love and rescue. Words we have memorized. Promises we have clung to when life has broken wide open.

They sink in and I breathe deep for the first time all day. Sometimes we just need the truth of God's love to wrap around our hurting, messy days. To hold us fast and remind us that we are not alone.

So thankful tomorrow is a new day.

"This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness."
- Lamentations 3:21-23

Hope

Over the past few years I have looked forward to Advent with increasing longing. A time to be still. To slow down and savor life. To remember what God has done and look forward to what He is continuing to do.

So tonight I swept the crumbs off the table. I turned off all of the lights save the Christmas tree and we gathered around. We lit the hope candle and Jeremy read verses from Grandpa Miller's bible. The older two listened intently their faces flickering in the candlelight while Ella alternated between grabbing at the candlesticks and climbing up and down being generally unhelpful. It was beautifully and imperfectly sacred.  

There is something about liturgy that gets to me. The aspects of worship that have been repeated for centuries. Heritage. Generation after generation joining in faith and awe of a God who reached down in a person long ago and continues to reach down today into our very lives.

"Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." Romans 15:13

  Hope. Not dependent on who we are or what our circumstances may be but on the unchangeable God. Hope that is secure and steadfast. Hope based on the promises of a God who cannot lie. Hope that cradles you in your worst moments, and gives you confidence in your best. 

Praying that wherever you are tonight you would feel His hope surrounding you.