“Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.”
Isaiah 54:2
This calling is written within a promise to the people of God, as He foretells the new covenant to come when His truth and salvation would spread throughout the nations.
In it, I believe we can see how God desires His people – His beloved children, His chosen – to live: with eager expectancy and a hope so steadfast that we prepare ourselves and our lives for what He has in store. Regardless of what we see, regardless of what disappointments we have known in the past. It is a calling to hope in Him even in the dark, to faith that brings Him great glory.
We don’t know what His plans for us here on earth will look like. But we have so many promises to hold fast to as God declares to us who He is through His Word.
Promises of our God’s goodness and grace, our strengthening and fullness of joy, His radiant glory displayed and power made perfect in our weakness, our perfecting as we learn to love and trust Him through obedience, His faithfulness and truth in all things.
He is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).
He is the living God who is, who was, and who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8).
And we are His. Lovingly kept in His hand as He holds fast to us (John 10:27-29). He is for us, and nothing in all of creation can separate us from God’s love for us through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 8:31, 38-39).
We will experience His faithfulness to us, both now and for all eternity, and the world will see His glory. We can trust Him here and forever, because He is so very trustworthy. He is Almighty God and our good Father, and He cares for us – He cares for you, specifically, and He is with you right where you are.
So may we look to Him, fix our eyes on His goodness and sovereign power, and put aside our fears. May we open ourselves wide in joyful expectation and confident hope for our God to come in and fill our lives with His abundant goodness and grace, far beyond what we could hope or imagine.
“Oh, how abundant is your goodness,
which you have stored up for those who fear you,
and worked for those who take refuge in you,
in the sight of the children of mankind!”
Psalm 31:19
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Ephesians 3:20-21
In Pleasant Places 