Sometimes facing humanity’s limits renews our understanding of God’s majesty. In today’s psalm we read that our God counts the stars and calls each one by name (Psalm 147:4). With no inventory or map or telescope required, He can see it all at once. 

As we walk through Holy Week and reflect on what Jesus experienced, let us remember this is the God we praise. While His power is mighty and His understanding infinite (v.5), His compassion for us tells of a God who sees not just the stars but our souls too. 

He can do anything—and He chose to give Himself to us. He made a way for us all and saves those whose hearts trust in Him. Our God sustains the humble (vv.1–6) and values those who fear Him (vv.10–11).

And during Holy Week, we rejoice that He made a way. It is good to sing praises to our God (v.1). The Amplified version says that He takes pleasure in those who “fear and worship Him [with awe-inspired reverence and obedience]” (v.11). 

When we praise the Lord…

Our reverence fuels our worship.
Our worship grows our humility.
Our humility opens our hearts to our need for restoration.

Our praise reminds us of the path to peace and rest. When we love Him and praise Him with all our hearts and souls and minds, we can find peace. 

This Holy Week, may we praise God for our risen Savior and remember His faithfulness to make a way for us all. May we worship our God who didn’t stop with the stars but has called each of us by name and calls us His own (Isaiah 43:1). And may we hold fast to His promises to heal our broken hearts (Psalm 147:3), rebuild what was lost (v.2), and strengthen us (vv.13–14). 

Oh, it is so good to sing to our God. When we bless the Lord, we are blessed and our souls find rest.

But then we read this promise: “The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him” (Lamentations 3:25).

What does that verse do to your heart? Does it feel like thin hope and the Lord being good don’t go together?

Let’s look closer. In this verse, wait is qa.vah in Hebrew, which means “to wait, look for, hope.” A likely literal translation is to twist and stretch and bind together, as in making a rope.

As I read this verse, then, it seems that Lamentations is saying that He is good to those who “twist and stretch and bind themselves to” Him in the waiting.

God’s people knew what long-haul waiting felt like. They waited through years of bondage in Egypt. They waited through years of desert wandering. When making pilgrimages to Jerusalem, they would sing of deliverance and the hope of redemption with songs like Psalm 130, “I wait for the Lord; I wait and put my hope in his word…Israel, put your hope in the LORD…he will redeem Israel,” (v.5,7–8). They held promises from Scripture that, while their waiting would be long, their king would come and that His goodness would make them tremble (Hosea 3:4–5). They knew that with God there is faithful love and redemption in abundance (Psalm 130:7). They knew a child would be born to reign and that His name would be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6–7).

And then here, in Lamentations 3, while mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, the writer reflected on what it means to wait faithfully, while staying bound to God.

So when Jesus was born, the hearts of God’s people had long been set toward the promise of a coming Messiah. Waiting with this kind of expectancy is how we hold hands with hope.

To qa.vah IS to hope.

In our own waiting seasons, even when the answers don’t come, we can attach ourselves to God. We can hold hands with hope in the waiting. When we don’t understand what’s to come, we can know that the Lord is good to those who wait for Him, whose souls seek Him. And as we celebrate this season of joy that He came, we can also hold hope for Him to come again. We hold the hope that He will stand and shepherd us, too, in the majestic name of the Lord His God (Micah 5:4).

To wait IS to hope. May we wait for God with God. Because with Him, there is redemption in abundance.

A woman picked up her water jar. Driven by thirst and the need for sustenance, she, too, came to the well. A well where the water was considered a generational blessing of provision from Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. A well that was deep and necessary for life to flourish and perhaps even considered sacred.

The woman carried an empty jar and a heavy heart, two vessels that needed filling. As she approached, Jesus chose to ignore three cultural taboos. Not only did He see her, He spoke to this lowly Samaritan (first taboo) woman (second taboo) who lived with a man she was not married to (third taboo). According to Jewish law, even touching the jar this woman carried would have been unacceptable. As they conversed, He offered her what only He could: the gift of living water.

Even in her situation, we see her reverence for God through her questions about where to worship. Jesus saw it all—the longing in her heart and the thirst in her soul. She came for water, yes, but when she had the chance to receive living water from the Messiah, she set down her water jar (John 4:28). With her deepest thirst quenched, she ran to tell others.

What Jesus brought to this woman transcended all she expected: the well’s provision, what she thought she needed, and what she was burdened by.

He sees us too. He sees our hearts for Him, and He sees where we fall short. He sees the load we carry. He knows everything we’ve ever done, and He still provides more than we could imagine. In the same everyday tasks, in the very places where we’re going for sustenance, this same living water is ours. He is waiting at the wells we’re turning to and He reaches far deeper than our buckets will go. His eternal well forever satisfies our souls.

When we come to him with our ears wide open and listen, we will find life (Isaiah 55:3).

Let’s lay down our jars to receive.

These are hard and sobering verses, aren’t they? Today’s chapters round out the sixth of Isaiah’s woes, this one directed at Assyria. We’re witness to Judah’s desperation and God’s detailed promise to ruin a nation that harmed His people. 

But what we also see on full display is our Father’s unfailing love. Even after all Judah had done, God spoke hope and redemption for them. 

It’s a pattern we know, isn’t it? Beginning all the way back in Genesis, every time His people turned their hearts from God and then cried out in their distress, God was faithful to meet them. They had hit that desperation here—even the warriors, the bravest among them, cried loudly in the streets (Isaiah 33:7). They were broken. Yet Isaiah’s plea for grace from God was paired with a bold declaration of faith that they knew when God would rise up, the nations would scatter (v.3). 

Not if, but when.

Their hope in God was still alive. They still feared Him, and that was their treasure (v.6).

This hope, full of a fear and respect for God, opened a new door for God’s people. Here, something changed. God had been so faithful, raising up leaders like Abraham, Moses, and David. He raised up judges and kings and prophets.

And now we read of a different way God will save them. It’s time for a new raising up.

When Isaiah says, “when you rise in your majesty” (v.3), it feels like an invitation for God’s reply just seven verses later. It’s like God says, “Now that you understand you’re out of options, now that you’ve come to your own end, now I will rise up.”

Can you imagine the hope and relief that pulsed through Judah as God pronounced these three “nows”?

Now I will rise up.
Now I will lift myself up. 
Now I will be exalted (v.10).

God promised to strengthen, deliver, and restore Judah (Zechariah 10:6). And He would reconcile and save those who trust in Him (Romans 5:8–11). He would restore peace. He promised Jesus our Judge, our Lawgiver, our King (Isaiah 33:22): Jesus, the One who lived righteously, the One who dwells on high, the One who is our daily bread and living water (vv.15–16).

To save His people from their suffering, He has raised Himself. He made a way for all who love Him, for all whose fear of the Lord is their treasure.

 Because of the LORD’s faithful love, we do not perish, for His mercies never end. They are new every morning. 
—Lamentations 3:22–23

Written by Marnie Hammar

We love a good “rags to riches” story, don’t we? Especially when God tells it in His upside-down kind of way. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God’s plan for our redemption thread through unlikely people, including the stories of lowly women like Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth. They all lead us to this part of the Advent story in Nazareth. 

In today’s passage, we read of how, because of God’s favor, our far-from-royal Mary would birth a king—the King—who will reign forever. Outlandish, right? This girl of low standing and little means, a promised bride who was no longer a child but not yet a woman, was chosen to mother a king? As this news took shape in her womb, her humble condition moved her to the outer edges of her community.

But God was more interested in who she wasn’t. 

Mary’s words to Gabriel—“See, I am the Lord’s servant”—tell us the story of what God saw in those deeper places. She wasn’t proud; she didn’t doubt; she wasn’t even hesitant. Her immediate posture of servanthood reveals a heart that loved and trusted God, even when it didn’t make sense. No, she didn’t have much to offer, but what she offered was what He most wanted. She offered herself.

Here’s the thing: we can’t fake humility. We can’t people-please or perform or strive our way into being humble. We can’t fool God. True humility lives in a heart that is completely surrendered. Humility asks that we empty ourselves and adopt the attitude of Christ (Philippians 2:5). Humility looks like trusting Him so completely that our souls are calmed like weaned children (Psalm 131:2). 

When our spirits connect with His Spirit, and we hear His voice in our souls, we experience a connection with Him that changes us in places only God can see. That communion transforms our hearts to want what He desires first and only. That’s what opens the door to humility—and that’s when we find His joy.

This journey to joy is exactly what we see in today’s passage, when Luke tells of Mary’s visit with Elizabeth. As Mary processed the news, her praise bubbled forth. She sang that “[her] soul magnifies the Lord; [her] spirit rejoices.” She understood and was blessed by His plans to exalt the lowly (vv.46-48,52). She held the hope of what God had promised through His Son.

In this season of Advent as we anticipate the birth of our King, our hearts are also revealed in the waiting. As we wait, may we know that He still comes to the lowly. He still gives grace to the meek. He still exalts the humble-hearted (James 4:10). 

Let us rejoice, for from the oft-overlooked rags of humility, come the riches of joy.

Written by Marnie Hammar

As we consider today’s passage, I’m reminded of the gravity of a personal greeting. A letter penned in a prison cell and then carried by land and sea from Rome to Colossae, a distance of about 1,300 miles, would have been highly treasured. When Tychicus arrived, it’s likely that word spread quickly for everyone to gather, to see the seal of Paul’s letter cracked and hear its message.

And then, tucked at the end of Paul’s correspondence, so filled with encouragement and instruction, comes a closing litany of greetings from beloved and revered colaborers in the faith. To hear names of other believers they know, leaders and laborers they have heard about, offering them greetings, would reassure all who heard that they were remembered, prayed for, and valued. 

It’s a bit like my heart-flutter at the park in eighth grade, but even better, because this closing holds more for their hearts than just “these guys say hi.” 

In these parting verses, Paul modeled the very encouragement he described in chapter two, as he prayed for “their hearts to be encouraged and joined together in love, so that they may have all the riches of complete understanding and have the knowledge of God’s mystery—​Christ” (Colossians 2:2). Placed alongside greetings from and details about no fewer than eight different brothers and sisters, Paul’s words simultaneously informed, built up, prepared, encouraged, offered witness, and reassured the Colossians. Even in the repetition of the simple phrase, “one of you,” he reaffirmed who they were while also establishing these co-laborers. In urging them to welcome and receive each other (Colossians 4:10), he yet again confirmed their bond and place in Christ. 

This is what it means to share in the needs of the saints (Romans 12:13). This is what it looks like to stay alert with all perseverance and intercession for all the saints (Ephesians 6:18). Paul’s witness to the work of Christ lives loudly beyond his cell. Even as he sat in chains, Paul built up these brothers and sisters in the faith one more time in these parting thoughts, “putting on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony,” (Colossians 3:14). He pronounces the victory of Christ that unites beyond border and circumstance.

Written by Marnie Hammar

The message surrounding each parable is the same: 

Jesus is coming back for us. “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate them one from another, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (vv.31–32).

We don’t know when. “Therefore be alert, because you don’t know either the day or the hour” (v.13). 

The choices we make while we wait matter. “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy” (v.21). 

Our choices tell the story of what we hold close and dear. Both the virgins and the servants understood their jobs. But as the foolish virgins and the lazy servant waited, a nap and a covered-over pile of dirt took priority over what’s to come. They didn’t long for more than what they had.

I’ll be honest—as I read this, I find myself tempted to do more. Get the oil! Invest and double the profit! Doing secures our place in the kingdom, right? But being known by Him and invited to enter the wedding (Matthew 25:10, Revelation 19:9), and hearing “Well done, good and faithful servant,” (Matthew 25:21) isn’t about perfectly completed spiritual checklists. In the waiting, our hearts are revealed. 

When He returns, He will divide those who love Him from those who don’t (vv.32–33). In the waiting, we need to love Him. 

Loving Him means we long for more than what’s in front of us. We anticipate the joy of His arrival with so much expectation that we run to stock up on oil well before we need it. We set our hearts on the words, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world’” (v.34). 

As His bride, let’s be diligent so that we can be found by Him without spot or blemish and also at peace (2Peter 3:11–14). Let’s lay down today’s fleeting urgencies for tomorrow’s everlasting promises. 

When the call comes in the middle of the night—when He comes looking for His sheep—let’s be prepared for the only light we’ll ever need (Isaiah 60:19–20). May we run to meet Him because we’ve been waiting.

So when I read what Paul writes in Philippians 4:12, it holds my attention: “I have learned the secret of being content.” This is not clickbait. Don’t we all want to learn how to be content in both abundance and in need? The very next verse tells us how, as Paul shares that we can do all things “through him who strengthens me” (v.13).

But if you’re like me, you want more details. Perhaps you feel challenged, as I do, to “think carefully about your ways” (Haggai 1:5) when struggling to give thanks. I’ve struggled to give thanks while my stomach is in knots and with being grateful when I see no way out. When we’re battling discontentment, we need to ask where we are placing our faith. We must examine what our minds and hearts and souls are holding. Today’s passages help us dive deeper into what Paul meant. We see in these verses a declaration of God’s ownership, provision and placement over all things. Individually, each is a truth we may know and embrace. But when we line them up, we’re faced with some tough questions. 

Do we really believe these things: God leads us and gives us what we need (Psalm 23:1–3); He gives us a place to rest and eat (vv.2,5); He keeps His promise to provide (Deuteronomy 6:10); and everything in the heavens and on earth belongs to God (1Chronicles 29:11)?

Because the secret to giving thanks in plenty and in want lies in where our hearts and minds dwell. We can dwell on what we lack or dwell in His kingdom. We can dwell on what we can’t control or dwell in His promise to lead us and provide what we need. 

When I overfocus on what’s missing more than building up His kingdom (Haggai 1:4–6), that’s a sign my heart is dwelling on the world instead of dwelling in Christ. Through Jesus, we are no longer in bondage (Deuteronomy 6:12, Galatians 5:1), but dwelling in that freedom is a choice. Do we seek to give thanks no matter what? Or do we seek to fill our lack with this world? What we seek tells the story of where we dwell.

Let’s lay down seeking this world’s counterfeit peace and security, and instead seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33). Let’s choose to dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:6). Because when we truly believe He is ruler of everything (1Chronicles 29:12), we will seek His provision of green pastures and quiet waters as our plenty. 

Then we will have learned the secret.

In today’s Scripture passage, we get a front-row seat for a similar ritual. We first read of God’s triumph through Deborah and Barak and then delight in the post-battle song celebrating God’s victory.

When chapter 4 begins, we learn that Israel has been under King Jabin’s harsh oppression for twenty long, hard years. Deborah commissions Barak to go to battle against him and conveys a promise from the Lord that God would hand over Sisera, the commander of King Jabin’s army, to Barak (Judges 4:6–7). Even when Barak hesitated (v.8) and God determined that a woman would instead defeat Sisera, His promise of deliverance stood firm. 

A guaranteed triumph waited. Let’s look at how God’s perfect battle plan came together. 

First, God showed His perfect timing. After Barak and Deborah journey to Mount Tabor to prepare for battle, God directs Deborah to tell Barak the exact time to go after Sisera: “Go! This is the day….Hasn’t the LORD gone before you?” (v.14). 

Then, in God’s perfect, pre-battle plan, while Barak is still making his way to the river Kishon, God begins the battle: “The LORD threw Sisera, all his charioteers, and all his army into a panic before Barak’s assault” (v.15).

As the battle transpires, God sends a perfect storm that floods the plains and disables the army’s chariots. “The skies poured rain, and the clouds poured water” (Judges 5:4); “the earth trembled,” and “the mountains melted” (vv.4,5); “the stars fought from the heavens,” and “the river Kishon swept them away” (vv.20–21). 

Though the Israelites pushed the enemy back, landing Barak in the hall of faith (Hebrews 11:32–34), we find two women at either end of this victory, appointed and empowered by God. In the beginning, it’s Deborah’s God-inspired urging that spurs the battle (Judges 4:6,14) and at the end, it’s Jael who quietly ties up the battle with a tent peg (v.21).

The battle is always His (Exodus 14:14). Regardless of Barak’s military experience or Deborah’s wisdom, God is the One who gave the wisdom and expertise in the first place. He goes before us (Judges 4:14) and He turns back our enemy (Zephaniah 3:14). We can count on His deliverance, for He has raised up the horn of salvation for us all (Luke 1:68-69). 

Thank you, Lord, that you are mighty to save (Zephaniah 3:17). 

That church camp girl with the perfectly curled bangs didn’t understand mercy. She didn’t understand how it works to be fully, eternally grafted in (Romans 11:19). 

When I read Romans 11 now, I linger over Paul’s description of God’s unrelenting, undeserved mercy for Israel, even as they stumbled and rejected Jesus (1Peter 2:8). I rejoice that His plans for Israel stay, that His covenant remains still. What delight that, “He has not rejected His people whom He foreknew” (Romans 11:2). 

This chapter offers a celebration for that church camp girl, and a (perhaps cautionary) reminder for her older self.

Because I confess, even as the memory of such palpable relief after my own stumbling floods back, at times I’ve felt self-satisfied. Now that I know I’m chosen (1Peter 2:9), there are days when I could be one Paul is speaking to when he says, “do not boast that you are better than those branches….you do not sustain the root, but the root sustains you,” (Romans 11:18). 

I think back to standing with my counselor with a humbled, grateful heart. God’s kindness, so unmerited yet unsparing, felt physical. It’s that same kindness and love that holds us all on the tree, through no achievement of our own (vv.21–22). 

We’ve all disobeyed, and yet we can receive His mercy—because Israel’s disobedience made room for ours (vv.30–31). He called us all out of the darkness into the light (1Peter 2:9). 

So then, Romans 11 is a banner of praise and a litany of thanksgiving as we see God’s faithful heart for all of His branches. His care to rescue the broken branches of Israel and His compassion to graft in the wild branches of the Gentiles, place both Jew and Gentile at the mercy of the tree. As mere branches (not roots), we grow because of who we are attached to. He preserves and revives (Hosea 14:6).

No, He has not rejected His people. Through the work done on another tree on the hill of Calvary, He eternally grafted in the wild branches who chose Him by faith yet still holds a place for His beloved Israel. 

His gracious gifts and calling are irrevocable. Because from Him, through Him, and to Him is everything (Romans 11:29,36).