By: Keith Sampson
Executive Coordinator, God of Hope
Fall sunrises in Indiana can be absolutely stunning, especially when you wake up excited about what the day may bring. Not because you know what will happen that day, but because you are happy, confident, and dependent on the strength that God has proven He can give you.
In less than a year, the landscape of my life had changed in a dramatic fashion: I left a job of 11.5 years, began working at a new and wonderful company, filed for divorce, and became a single dad of 2.5-year-old twins. It was enough to make someone’s head spin. I was confident and happy, while spinning at the same time. If I had believed I had all the answers or knew exactly what I was doing, I would have been fooling myself. The only thing I did know was that God is bigger, and He has a plan.
That sunrise…at that time in life, it symbolized so much more than its beauty. It beamed and started the day the way I felt—optimism with life through a dependence on God that I don’t believe I ever had prior to that year. I had been beaten down emotionally, confused beyond my own comprehension, and forced to seek outside help in unraveling my circumstances. I began to rediscover myself, who I was as a person of peace, and what it meant to rely so much on God and His provision. I don’t claim to have had it worse than the many others who go through the same experiences or worse. My claim and my story are my own.
At this point, I was able to see exactly how God had been working to put me where I needed to be:
First, the lesson that God is bigger and has a plan. He set a foundation for me to face some of life’s most difficult times. While learning and growing, I can be of some help to others going through similar situations.
Second, He gave me the ability to surrender to Him what I wanted to “fix” or understand—because I couldn’t do either.
Third, He knew what was on the horizon and prepared me for it.
In my next blog post, I will share some specific examples on how this was done and a few of the lessons I learned through them. While most people looked at me and didn’t know how I was doing it, I had a renewed confidence in life. I had HOPE. This is my life…
“They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.’”
Lamentations 3:23-24