Tabor: When God says, “This is the day!”
At Mount Tabor, God told Deborah and Barak, “This is the day I will give you victory over your oppressors.” What deliverance is he giving into your hands today?
At Mount Tabor, God told Deborah and Barak, “This is the day I will give you victory over your oppressors.” What deliverance is he giving into your hands today?
Long ago and still today, God promises his traumatized, grieving, scattered people: I will be a sanctuary to you. I will protect you. I will gather you back.
When we find ourselves writhing and groaning in the face of evil and grief, God is in it, giving us grace to “labor” in a way that births deliverance and life.
The day I woke to news that tanks rolled through Moscow’s streets, I wrote, “I don’t plan to beat down any doors. But what God opens, I will walk through.”
The Proverbs 31 woman shows us what other Scriptures teach us: When we fight fear of the future with the fear of the Lord, our God becomes to us a sanctuary.
Even in suffering, even in exile, may you find growing within you: A life energetic and blazing with holiness, conceived by God himself. Life healed and whole. Laughter and singing. Genuine faith proved genuine. Living hope. One-anothering love. A future that starts now.
It's the best-loved verse in Jeremiah, and God says it to exiles. He announces to people who feel they have no future at all: "I know what I have planned for you. I have plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I have plans to give you a future filled with hope."