Do Not Waste Your Meantime
“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” - Matthew 6:34
Yesterday, we talked about the time in between where you want to be and where you are right now. We will call this period, “the meantime.” It is a period in our lives that is pregnant with possibility, but we have to be patient. How we manage the meantime is key. It can either make us or break us. It can either frustrate us or fuel us, and different people handle this season differently.
For some, the meantime is miserable and stressful, but for others it is an opportunity to make us better. Before us today is the familiar story about a woman by the name of Hannah. She is married to a devout man name Elhanah. Their relationship by all indications seems to be good, their life appears to be great. But the issue is that Hannah is barren.
As a result, she is openly hurting because she desperately wants to have a son. In that society, being able to give your husband a child elevated the status of a woman, and so Hannah is fighting for significance in a world that is trying to deny her simply because she has not had a child. When you read 1 Samuel 1, Hannah goes from barren when the chapter begins, to blessed by the time it ends.
It is a story that I believe serves as a model for all those who seek to discover how we should live and what we should do while waiting on our own dreams to happen and for our promises to come to pass. In the book of Jeremiah, we learn that in the midst of an impending threat from Babylon, God proclaimed that He would send a Messiah who would lead His people against those who sought to oppress them and hold them down.
That is what Advent is about. It is about the promise that help is coming, and the hope that God is going to do something to reverse the state of affairs as we see them, not just for their lives then, but for our lives now. When it comes to waiting in the meantime, we must be intentional about using this time as an opportunity to allow God to work within us and better us. Do not waste your meantime!
Yesterday, we talked about the time in between where you want to be and where you are right now. We will call this period, “the meantime.” It is a period in our lives that is pregnant with possibility, but we have to be patient. How we manage the meantime is key. It can either make us or break us. It can either frustrate us or fuel us, and different people handle this season differently.
For some, the meantime is miserable and stressful, but for others it is an opportunity to make us better. Before us today is the familiar story about a woman by the name of Hannah. She is married to a devout man name Elhanah. Their relationship by all indications seems to be good, their life appears to be great. But the issue is that Hannah is barren.
As a result, she is openly hurting because she desperately wants to have a son. In that society, being able to give your husband a child elevated the status of a woman, and so Hannah is fighting for significance in a world that is trying to deny her simply because she has not had a child. When you read 1 Samuel 1, Hannah goes from barren when the chapter begins, to blessed by the time it ends.
It is a story that I believe serves as a model for all those who seek to discover how we should live and what we should do while waiting on our own dreams to happen and for our promises to come to pass. In the book of Jeremiah, we learn that in the midst of an impending threat from Babylon, God proclaimed that He would send a Messiah who would lead His people against those who sought to oppress them and hold them down.
That is what Advent is about. It is about the promise that help is coming, and the hope that God is going to do something to reverse the state of affairs as we see them, not just for their lives then, but for our lives now. When it comes to waiting in the meantime, we must be intentional about using this time as an opportunity to allow God to work within us and better us. Do not waste your meantime!
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