“You, GOD,
are High God of the cosmos,
Far, far
higher than any of the gods.”
~Psalm 97:9 (Msg)
God is
bigger — yes, we can cope,
God is
deeper — yes, we can hope.
God is
wider — than any problem’s threat,
God is longer — than any sinner’s
debt.
***
No matter our present experience,
whether we rally in the abyss of hopelessness or are sunken to doldrums or take
pleasure in plain delight, in and amongst all these, our belief in God holds us
firm.
Because we believe in a Big God—the
Divine nature unlimited in power, scope, and reach—we can glory in the
magnificence of belief.
To glory in the bigness of God is
simply, by belief, deciding to hope and, therefore, presenting faithfully before
God and the world. Coming to this point of expressed belief is not always easy,
but landing at the decision is. It takes courage.
Having decided for belief—to glory
in the bigness of God—to believe that God is bigger than any concern or worry
or loss or guilt—we become benefactors of blessing.
Faith And The Ability To Cope And Hope
Only faith in a Big God is enough
to cope and hope in seemingly impossible situations. And whether these
situations come for an hour or two or last days or even longer is irrelevant.
Somehow, especially as we look back, God’s bigness is big enough to get us
through.
Grace is sufficient; not copious
nor more than we need, just sufficient.
Even at times when coping seems
impossible, we can know that God is big enough to help us endure the impossible.
Even as we sink on a tumultuous day, having felt vanquished, we still somehow
rise for the next. Repeated instances and memories of times like these, where we
endured, reinforce our faith.
Faith And The Ability To Cope And Hope
If we are able to cope we are able
to hope.
Grace has got us through, and
despite our despairing we have coped. And if we didn’t cope we learned more
about coping. The next time we were pushed for hope we seemed to cope somehow
better.
The strangeness in coping is that
we find that life requires us to grow; what we struggled to cope with a few
years ago we perhaps cope better with now. Or maybe we are reminded that coping
is linked with hoping.
We can know that faith is the
passage to coping, and that, in turn, is the passage to hoping.
Faith helps us cope; when we cope,
we have hope.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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