Trust in the Lord with all your heart
    and lean not on your own understanding;
 in all your ways submit to him,
    and he will make your paths straight. – Proverbs 3:5-6

Back in July, during one of our trips to Florida, Rebekah and I visited the small farming community of Newington in rural Georgia.

The two columns I penned in response (Hope in Rural America & We all want the same thing) talked about a community at a crossroads, the balance point between resignation and reimagination, between stagnation and positive change, between “what’s the point” and “what’s the plan?”

It’s the town where Rebekah’s mother grew up and her cousins were raised, but the life kind of drained out of it after the elementary school closed, the train stopped coming through and the business district dried up. And, rather than look for creative ways to reinvent themselves a generation or more of leaders allowed decay to take hold and hope to dissolve.

A glimmer of light:

This summer I talked about the passion Rebekah’s cousin Zandra brings to her vision for positive and sustainable change. Well, this fall she took that ambition a step or two beyond her work with the Newington Heritage Society and decided to run for mayor.

She won, unseating the incumbent while garnering more than 70% of the vote. A vote for Zandra was, essentially, a vote against inertia and a vote for tomorrow.

So we stopped by on our way back from Florida to offer our congratulations (and eat her pork roast). Zandra has a monumental task ahead of her. But isn’t that an appropriate metaphor for the life all of us are invited to engage?

If tomorrow is going to be anywhere near the satisfying and redemptive experience God intends then it is likely going to involve effort commensurate to the value of the outcome.

Sure, God is all about miracles; but the most compelling miracle is the one where you – or I – believe in what is possible to the extent that we actually do something about it, and then refuse to give in or to give up when things don’t immediately go our way.

Putting in commitment and effort commensurate to how much we value the outcome…

So as I face tomorrow
with its problems great and small,
I’ll trust the God of miracles,
give to him my all. 
(Albert B. Smith, 1947)

This is what “Emmanuel” means: God with us, God for us, God in us. It’s the whole point of Christmas and it is the difference between wishful thinking and actual Hope.

– DEREK