Let God Arise! Devotion of the Month

What are you building your hopes on?

The recent collapse of the global financial system, and the corresponding billions of dollars lost to private and corporate investors, shareholders, and financiers demonstrates how tenuous our foundations are.  So many of the financial planning corporations use the imagery of strength, stability, rock-solid foundations as the controlling image they hope to communicate.  Prudential, for instance, sports a picture of the rock of Gibraltar to underwrite its motto and branding, it’s “rock solid” imagery.  Most companies assure us that whatever happens in this changing, chaotic, and strange world, they remain steadfast, unmovable, abounding in the work of the world to increase value and broaden assets.

In surveying life, we live in a time of profound instability: terrorism and its senseless unforseen strikes of wanton violence, unstable financial markets, environmental upset and damage, the rise of petty dictators worldwide, the rampant suffering of the common folk due to job loss, lack of proper health care, stressed families, and shallow spirituality.  This list, as impressively depressing as it is, represents only a sliver of the poignant and constant issues we confront today.

On every front we are nervous and melancholic, unable to find the kind of assurance that things will, after all the chaos and shakiness, turn out alright.  What are we to think of the future, especially for our children, if the Lord tarries?  In light of the instability, the uneasy sense that things are slip-sliding away, and the gnawing doubt that we don’t know what to do about it–what shall we do?

As a follower of Jesus of Nazareth, and one who holds to the teaching of his apostles and the prophets, I believe there is a foundation that we can build on that can provide confidence in place of doubt, joy in the place of gloom, and vision in the place of retreat.  The answer is plain and simple, requiring no special knowledge or orientation, and is available to any and all who simply hear God’s word and obey it.  What is the answer to our run amok sense of trouble today?  Simple faith on the Word of God.

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