"Serenity"
photo taken at the Yorktown Riverwalk Landing, Yorktown, VA
September 22, 2013
... God, who gives life to the dead,
and calls those things which do not exist
as though they did.
- Romans 4:17
The passage above is one of my favorite passages in the Bible.
It speaks of the immense creative power of words. God gives life to the dead and causes things to exist as He calls them forth into existence.
Last Sunday my friend Melanie and I took a walk at the Riverwalk Landing in Yorktown, VA. It was dusk, and a beautiful sailboat was about to dock. The boat was named "Serenity."
And somehow, as my friend and I watched that boat come to shore, we felt such a serene presence all around us. I stood there, transfixed by the beauty of that moment. It was as if the word on the boat commanded the spirit of serenity to surround all of us.
"What you are is what you see." This was a comment someone gave at Sunday School that morning. And indeed he is right. We see the world around us through the spectacles that we have on. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The names we attach to our circumstances, the perspective from which we view our life... it matters so much.
We create our own reality. This is not to deny the circumstances we find ourselves in. But I truly believe that God gave us the authority to change our circumstances as a weapon against the enemy who seeks to imprison us and steal our hope.
When in truth, God wants us to live in an environment of hope. Whatever it is that we are going through, there is no such thing as a hopeless situation.
