The other day while cleaning out my hallway closet I found it. Now that I had taken the plunge and thrown out all my brown paper Aldi's bags, I had carefully replaced the stack with 3 simple but overly large fabric bags. There behind the fabric grocery bags was a small paper bag. What's this, I wondered.
Inside were 4 old blocks.
That's right! I had bought these for my friend, Julie. By the time I remembered to give them to her, I couldn't remember what they had spelled. Once again I began turning the blocks over...l, o, e, b? Surely the word must have been love. I carefully looked at each of the 6 sides on each block. No letter v!
Was I thinking I was going to marker in a a little dash here or there to make a letter look like a v? No, no way! For myself...I might have thought that. For Julie, my dear friend, whose blocks I had already decided to keep, no way!
New thought...what if the word wasn't love. What other 4 letter word could it be? Twenty minutes later, I got it!
HOPE
It was better than LOVE. Love is passe, overused, trite. HOPE is soul-ful, heart-pounding, life-inducing.
I grabbed my antique, chunky, perfect letters and placed them on my antique ice chest. Perfect! They looked perfect. It was confirmed. I needed them. (Sorry Julie.)
HOPE...my favorite word for the new year.
Why is it that January 1st should feel any different from December 31st? It's simply a tomorrow tacked on to today, or is it?
The difference is hope. With each new year comes hope. Hope that I'll lose weight, hope that I'll pray more, hope that I'll get my priorities right, hope that I'll make a difference in the lives of others. Hope that God will reach down and use me to be a blessing to those I touch. It will be small, likely unnoticeable. I just need to hope in that quiet trusting kind of way. I need to hope and believe and act upon the truth that all I need to do is stay close to Him and let the amazing smell of His aftershave rub off on me.
I hope I'll choose that...day after day.
It's even better than losing 20 pounds!
Do you forgive me, Julie?
ReplyDeleteI certainly HOPE so:)
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna go snuggle up with my God and see if I can get a whiff of that aftershave too. That says it so well.
Today He has given me glimpses and whiffs of hope - I am sooo blessed!
Ok the lose weight well you don't need to. And touching someones life, you have touched Ozzy's life for sure. Thank you for helping him to read.
ReplyDelete