Day 13

Be Like Sam.

Maybe the holidays bring undue stress and anxiety to your heart.

Maybe Thanksgiving doesn’t feel like much of a thankful time but rather a time filled with angry words and heartless deeds.

Maybe Thanksgiving is more of a forgotten time of year, just as you feel neglected, alone, and wearisome.

I challenge you to look up.

Look up beyond the turmoil and strife.

Look up beyond the discouragement of your heart.

Step into the great outdoors and breathe in the beauty. Stand beside a waterfall until the rushing roar is all you hear. Sit on the seashore with the wind against your skin until the sun’s warmth is all you feel and the salt air is all you taste.

There will be troublesome times and even worse, troubled people along your path.

But don’t let these stop you from your purpose and your destiny.

Strive to see more. Strive to be more.

And never give up.

It might be a shire that is your end, but with the right choice, an eternal eternity can be, and that is greater than you could ever imagine.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the Lord, and I will bring you back from your captivity; I will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, says the Lord, and I will bring you to the place from which I cause you to be carried away captive.

Jeremiah 29:11-14

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

Philippians 3:20-21