August 10, 2019

    For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end [or as the Revised Version puts it, "a future and a hope," or a happy future] Jer. 29:11.
 
    No matter how things seem to us, God knows what He is doing.  He knows what He has in mind.  He knows that His thoughts toward us are good, and not evil, to give us a happy future.  This is His expectation, and it should be ours.  He is planning for it all the time.
 
    Things may be going hard, but remember___
 
                                ...Behind the dim unknown,
                                Standeth God within the shadow,
                                    keeping watch above His own.
                                                            ___James Russell Lowell
 
    And He has promised with every trial to make a way of escape (1 Cor. 10:13).  He has promised never to leave us, nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).
 
    Rowland Hill tells of a rich man and a poor man of his congregation.  The wealthy man came to him with a sum of money that he wished to give to the poor brother, and he asked the pastor to give it as he thought best, either all at once or in small amounts.  Mr. Hill sent the poor man a 5-pound note with the message "More to follow."  Every few month a remittance was sent with the same notation, "More to follow."  Now, that's grace.  God's grace is like that--more to follow.
 
    God's thoughts follow us all the time, and we are to have faith that "God's tomorrow will be better thantoday."  His thoughts toward us are "thoughts of peace, and not of evil," to give us a happy future, an expected end.
 
 
MEDITATION PRAYER:  "I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me: thou art my help and my deliverer; make no tarrying, O my God" (Ps. 40:17).