Apples are ripening here on the hill, and I’m up against the annual dilemma. I can pick everything now before more fall to the ground, or I can wait a bit and let them ripen on the tree. Some of the apples will be lovely, while others will be blighted or riddled through with worm tunnels.
It all comes down to the perennial problem of life since Genesis 3:
In the garden, there’s no such thing as a sure thing.
I can plant the best seeds in perfectly prepared earth, but a cold, wet spring might rot them where they lie. If they do manage to sprout their green hopefulness into the sunshine, I can tend them carefully, weeding and watering faithfully, only to have the whole crop munched down by deer or woodchucks. And if they manage to grow to maturity, setting bright yellow blossoms as a promise of cucumbers and squash to come, a dry spell can bake the plants, shrivel the vines, and result in stunted and inedible veggies.
If you’re looking for a sure thing, don’t look in the garden!
The truth is that sure things are hard to come by, so when I find the word surely in the Bible, it captures my attention.
What can really I be sure of?
God’s Goodness and Mercy
In Psalm 23, David sings like a choir boy about God’s goodness and mercy—not merely in the past, and not just for today, but for always:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life…” (Psalm 23:6)
No matter what happens to me, even if it’s something I wouldn’t have chosen, I can rest in the truth that God’s goodness and mercy are running after me. The uncertainties you are facing right now, the future situation you are dreading or the past scenario you regret can be transformed by an awareness that a good God is presiding over your life, and his mercy comes like a flood, new every morning.
It’s a sure thing, and you can count on it.
The uncertainties you are facing right now, the future situation you dread or the past scenario you regret can be transformed by an awareness that a good God presides over your life, and his mercy comes like a flood, new every morning.
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God’s Bearing and Carrying
We are all subject to the same affliction that plagues my apple trees. We are blighted by sin and riddled through with selfish motives. Apart from the death, resurrection, and ascenion of our living, sin-bearing Savior, we’re a hopeless lot, but Isaiah saw hope coming on a God-revealed horizon and wrote with joy:
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows…” (Isaiah 53:4)
He did it. He picked up your gossipy mouth and your tendency to worship money and your undisciplined habit of scrolling and your impatient, sharp-tongued way of living in your house with your family and he carried them to the cross.
It’s a sure thing that the One who breathed new life into your dead soul is fully committed to bearing and carrying you now.
Now that I’ve noticed the word surely in the Bible, I can’t unsee it, and I have discovered that it occurs 198 times in the ESV. When God says he will do something, he will surely do it. When he promises to be with us in some particular way, he will surely be there with us and for us.
Are you looking for a really sure thing?
Look no further.
It’s a sure thing that the One who breathed new life into your dead soul is fully committed to bearing and carrying you now.
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Holding You in the Light,
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This seven-day devotional plan affirms that perseverance is so much more than simply hanging on. Those who follow Jesus Christ are familiar with the dogged patience of waiting, because we have read the words of Scripture about eternal rewards for those who endure. So we persevere—sometimes just because God has commanded us to. When the newness wears off, when we don’t feel like it, when everything just feels too hard, we press on, and we press in to Christ. He is the prize.
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