...

            I lay in bed last night, dwelling on my life, the life of my family members and of those closest to my heart. As I remembered the struggles, the concerns, the disappointments and all the scenarios of the past that could have turned quite sour, there seemed to be a banner that covered them all with the words "But God is faithful." My mind was flooded with memories of how God had been faithful in my life, in my brother's life, in the birth of my niece and the list could go on.

            I was then struck with a burning desire for this to be the banner over my life. I want to be someone who speaks in such a way so as to point to God's faithfulness even if the cards of life that I've been dealt don't make it easy. My mind was then brought back to a conversation I had a year ago with a new friend about thirty years my elder. We were sitting in a breakfast cafe getting acquainted and she began to unveil her story to me. As she shared the events of her life, she brought every element back to "but God was faithful..." I was dumbfounded. There were parts of her story that, by our cultures standards, would give her every right to bitterness, unforgiveness and anger toward God and people, but in place of those, she always pointed back to God's faithfulness. Every hurt or struggle, she used as an opportunity to look for and find how God was being faithful. I was quite humbled.

            I often find myself buying into the cultural cues that we have a right to and even deserve a "good" life. This, in turn, only leads to complaining and an annoying entitlement attitude. I believe remembering God's faithfulness in my life is the antidote to this attitude. I found that as I meditated on God's faithfulness of the past, the worries and concerns of the present diminished. The small ones seemed suddenly irrelevant and the big ones seemed to fall under the banner, "but God is faithful." I can trust and hope in God's faithfulness for the present concerns because his faithfulness will cover the worries of the present in the same way that it has covered the anxieties of the past.