The Bible says:

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings as eagles;
they shall run, and not be weary;
and they shall walk, and not faint.
— Isaiah 40:31

The longer we walk with God, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ for all things, the more we learn that God truly is faithful.  As a young believer who had experienced a few difficulties, I remember wondering if I would really be able to trust God in every situation.  I would hear people testify to the faithfulness of God in all kinds of circumstances and sometime think that maybe they were exaggerating a little bit.  Could God really be trusted in any time or season, in any kind of difficulty?

Today, I realize how foolish I was to doubt.  Not that I am always the perfect picture of faith.  I still worry.  I still wonder what God is up to sometimes.  But I have seen in every single circumstance of life that God really is right there, able, willing and ready to help me through.  Not just with feelings of hope or faith, but with real and tangible help.  The simple fact is, God intervenes all the time to help His children through the circumstances and situations of life.

Whoever walks with the Lord, trusting Him with all the circumstances of life, will be renewed in heart, mind and body.  They will rise up on the thermal currents of life and ride along the top, no matter what is happening below or around them.  God will see them through.  Though death itself overtakes them, they will slip through to life everlasting, never to be hurt by death again.  And in the mean time, while they yet walk this earth, the devil himself will be held back, like a junkyard dog kept by a high fence, unable to devour them though he rages and howls with all he’s got.

Jesus Christ is Lord, and all who trust in Him will know His strength and power to save, to protect, and to help.

I think that every year, I look forward more eagerly to spring and the summer to follow.  This does not mean that I hate winter.  I love Montana winter, which is why I am here instead of Texas where I was born and raised.

But I love spring more.  New life, new fresh light, new skies and a steady, growing celebration that cannot be held back.

Anyway, on to the poem.  I wrote this in 2004, and it is included with other things in the stories and poems at www.Goodwordusa.org .  I wanted to inlude it here because I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.

Early Promises

at sunrise
stars and night
fade away
as again bright sunlight
peeks over the horizon
eager to leap out
chasing away
cold winter’s gray

the dawning day
a glimpsed reflection
of larger things
of slow-motion struggles
between seasons and times
spring always winning
triumphantly marching
over wintry death

the twitching leaves
of a midwinter tree
explode suddenly into flight
proving to be
not dead leaves at all
but a restless cloud
of living sparrows

it’s all a dance
in the present age
all this motion of time
stepping first one way
then back again
from planting to harvest
from snows to bubbling brooks
only to do it all again

but for now
I rejoice in the promise
laughing (already)
in the joy of spring
while winter yet remains
I’m dancing my own steps
in early morning sunlight
laughing well ahead of time

————

As night gives way to dawn, and winter gives way to spring, so also death will one day give way — forever — to life and to the glory that is to be revealed in God’s children.

©2004 by Jim Sutton

Being human, I sometimes wonder just what God is really like.  I face all the doubts and ideas anyone else would, I’m sure.  I have experienced many things that fix the idea firmly in my mind and soul that God is everything the Bible says He is.  He has been all those things in my life.  I guess many people think of the Bible differently than I do.  I see it as a book of reality and life, not as the text for religion that many are content to accept.

God is not about religion at all.  Even faith itself is not much about religion.  Our humanized attempts at religion try to imitate faith (or conjure it up) and to precisely describe God.  But as with all things human, our religions fall short of truly knowing God, just as our minds also fail to comprehend the wonder of life and being.  Spiritual life does not flow from religion but from God Himself.  Religion, is most often just a shell left behind when faith grows too big or when the light has gone.

I believe in Jesus Christ.  I know that He knew what it is that we are all after, whether we are Jewish, Christian, atheist, or whatever.  Our tags and ideas are just so much effort tossed into the wind, most of the time, if not always.  I have no doubts about Christ or the faith I have been given from God.

That faith is a gift.  It is not something I was able to figure out or discover, and then shape and mature into something good.  It is a gift of God that exists apart from what I am as a person.  I am no wiser than the most foolish, no stronger than the weakest, no more given to faith in the face of difficulties than the most faithless of all people.  I am Judas and all the others that have ever failed to measure up.

I have always failed to rightly understand, and I have seldom taken the right road in any real test.  And yet I still believe and I am able to see a few things, now and then.  I guess even a dog has great insights from time to time.  (Maybe a lot more often than any human being, for all we know.)  I am a believer solely by the grace of God.  And I believe that God loves all people just as much as He loves me.

What I do know, instinctively, is that the universe exists and that it is here by the will and choices of Someone, something.  I know that great light is somewhere to be found, and that this perfect light is not without a mind or personal purpose. I call that Mind, that Being, God.  He is my Father and the Father of all who hope in Him.

I often suspect that God is not as belabored with our tiny, microspic human concerns as we may hope or fear.  Yet I know that He knows all about us, and that He is present with us when we call on Him.  He is the source of all being, all life — all that is right and good.  And He is the one who always makes things right again when we work to skew them beyond all recognition.

And we do mess things up, alright.  We make a mess of most things.  I have little doubt that our propensity for destruction and confusion is one reason the universe is physically structured as it is.  We are not likely to leave our planet soon, as a population.  Even then, if we managed to survive away from home, we would not be able to reach far across, much less beyond, our galaxy for a long, long time.  Suns and stars come and go in such periods of time.

No, we are given a good and safe place to live, while we come to terms with life and death and eternity.  And the rest of the universe is also kept safe from us.  God is always wise in all His ways.

I know that God is good and that He delights in good.  I pray that we will all respond in faith to His call, as He continually calls to our hearts and minds.  He is the perfect light, the real light that came into the world and that saves us from our own selves, and from the consequences of our foolish choices.

Jim