We are SO close to Christmas. 6 more days! I can hardly wait!
As I have said before, Christmas is my FAVORITE time of the year. We get to celebrate the anticipation of the birth of Christ... the weeks leading up to the celebration of the most amazing event of all time! (God sent Himself in human form to die for the sins of the world... it doesn't get any more amazing and humbling than that!)
Today, we look at the small, prophetic book of Habakkuk. Not your typical scripture reading for the Christmas season... but SO very important!
We have been going through the family tree of Jesus- and we now come to the prophet Habakkuk, who prophesied during the time just before the exile of God's people. It was hard to find hope during such a difficult time. Because of their disobedience, God was going to hold up His end of the covenant promise to exile His people because they were unfaithful to Him. And through their suffering, they would turn back to Him. God knew it was necessary for repentance... but it sure was hard for Him and for His people...
Habakkuk cries out to God and says, "I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guard post. There I will wait to see what the LORD says and how He will answer my complaint..."
And then he goes onto say that even though everything seems dark, barren and empty... "yet I will rejoice in the LORD! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation! The Sovereign LORD is my strength!" (Habakkuk 2:1, 3:17-19)
Habakkuk understood what it meant to wait on the Lord and to trust in His salvation... to rejoice even when he didn't understand... to trust when there was nothing he could do in his own strength.
To be grateful amidst difficulty is hard... but to be continually thankful EACH day helps us to appreciate things when times are tough.
Today, we were given the task of making a "grateful" jar. We are to write down things that we are grateful for whenever we think of them and place them in the jar. And this jar can serve as a reminder during tough times, of how very much we have to be thankful for! We can go to that jar and pull out the many reasons we can praise God! What are you grateful for? Maybe you could make a jar to help remember ALL that you have to be grateful for too!
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