Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Who Loves You?

Photo from Pxhere

How many times today has someone told you that they love you?

If you have a loving family, you’ll probably hear them express their love for you frequently.

But what if your family ties are a bit strained? What if you don’t have many close relationships at all, and consider yourself to be fairly alone in the world?

Then you probably don’t hear the words “I love you” nearly enough.

There’s a remedy for that:

Open a Bible.

The unfailing love of God is a soundtrack that reverberates through the Scriptures.

It’s easy to find verses in the New Testament that exemplify God’s love:

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
“This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.” (1 John 4:10)
And of course: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

But what about the Old Testament?

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Happy In-Between

Image by Jan Vašek from Pixabay

A few weeks ago, I heard a lady say, “Happy In-Between!”

It took me a moment to figure out what she meant.

I finally realized that she was referring to the time after Christmas but before New Year’s. We don’t really have a term to describe the awkward period between these two holidays, so this lady settled on “In-Between,” and hoped we’d have a happy time during it.

It got me thinking about the other “in-between” times in our lives.

Many of us go through times when we’re in an awkward phase of waiting for something to happen.

Perhaps we believe God has given us a promise about something He will do in our lives, but it’s taking a long time to come to pass.

Maybe we’re trusting God for a healing, a new job, the restoration of a marriage, or the return of a prodigal child.

It can be hard to stay happy during a time of limbo, when nothing seems to be happening in our situation. As the months go by, our prayers don’t seem any closer to being answered.

So what do we do when we’re having trouble staying upbeat, faithful, and patient during the in-between times, when life just seems to be a hard slog?

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