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    Promises of Hope for Difficult Times
    Promises of Hope for Difficult Times
    Promises of Hope for Difficult Times
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    Promises of Hope for Difficult Times

    By Jane Kirkpatrick

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    About this ebook

    In this insightful devotional, New York Times best-selling author Jane Kirkpatrick provides comfort and inspiration for those in the midst of life’s challenges. Promises of Hope for Difficult Times is a personal yet universal journey to find new beginnings in the face of loss or unwelcome change. Jane offers a needed reminder that God longs to show compassion and care, rest and refuge to those who hurt.

    The 140 Scripture-based reflections bring hope and encouragement in the wilderness places of our lives and remind us all that in the midst of life’s winters, there remains the promise of spring. A Scripture reading accompanies each of Jane’s personal reflections, making this a comforting gift for those who need a daily dose of encouragement to face their pressures and problems.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarvest House Publishers
    Release dateFeb 1, 2013
    ISBN9780736949965
    Promises of Hope for Difficult Times
    Author

    Jane Kirkpatrick

    Jane Kirkpatrick is the author of twenty books and is a two-time winner of the WILLA Literary Award. Her first novel, A Sweetness to the Soul, won the Western Heritage Wrangler Award, an honor given to writers such as Barbara Kingsolver and Larry McMurtry. For twenty-six years she "homesteaded" with her husband Jerry on a remote ranch in Eastern Oregon.  She now lives with Jerry, and her two dogs and one cat on small acreage in Central Oregon while she savors the value of friendship over fame.

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      Book preview

      Promises of Hope for Difficult Times - Jane Kirkpatrick

      Kirkpatrick

      A Word to the Reader

      The nineteenth-century poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, wrote, I describe myself as a landscape studied at length and in detail…or like a word I am coming to understand. I find nurture from the landscapes of the high desert where I live and at the sea where we vacation and even in the concrete forests of large cities where I often work. I discover things I believe God wants me to consider when I am present in those places and take time to consider God’s Word, if only for a few moments a day.

      These words I’ve written for you arose from a variety of landscapes while my husband and I experienced changes in health, family constellation, and grief over leaving a place we’d carved out of hostile landscape and lived on for more than a quarter century. Many of those transitions were difficult, yet always we found the promise of hope that thrived within the turmoil. This devotional is a result of writing of that hope and the insights gained during those difficult days.

      It’s my hope that this little book will bring you into a quiet place where Scripture and another’s coming to understand might bring you nurture. You may choose to read the Scripture passage from your Bible and to read verses before and after for more context and to allow time for God to speak to you.

      Don’t feel you have to read the book straight through or even every day. Select a verse and words and let them invite you to receive the hope placed within. Never hesitate to record when God’s insights bring you back to the wisdom of Scripture. Be encouraged to read, pause, contemplate, and find respite as you let the words bring you understanding and hope for the difficult times you’re facing.

      Warmly,

      Jane Kirkpatrick

      Job 12:12

      Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding?

      Job 12:12

      Jerry and I drove back to the ranch, a place we’d lived for twenty-six years. It’s a remote acreage along a wild and scenic river, down a serpentine road with dips and curves that become essentially a one-lane dirt road. We lived seven miles from the mailbox and eleven miles from pavement. Because with age came wisdom, we recently left for health reasons and because another winter loomed daunting in our minds.

      Going back after six months away, we cried a bit for what had been. Not a sadness really but a remembering. Building a life on Starvation Lane was a grand adventure that shaped us and many others. Neither of us wishes we had not made that trek to dream and build and make a way beside that river. But neither do we regret the move we made to leave it behind. This is a good place to be in one’s life: happy for past choices; happy for present ones.

      It was those years on that ranch where I learned to trust that if I needed to leave, the road would be passable. Somehow, bills would get paid. We’d recover from accidents we didn’t prevent. I learned there to take deep breaths and not to wonder what the future held but to instead cherish what there was.

      The futon folded out the night we returned for a visit. It was a fine bed for us. The pellet stove started right up, which was good as the night wore cool, black, and still. Not even coyotes howled. Only the hum of the refrigerator lulled us asleep.

      In the morning we reminded each other of what God had done for us in that place and how we’d been blessed now with a new home closer to hospitals and services we had greater need for. We closed the gate and sighed.

      We’re home now, surrounded with memories not meant to hold us hostage but to transform. Even as we age, we can change, make a new way, drive down new roads and find blessings wherever we’re allowed to bloom. Our journey back reminds us.

      Proverbs 25:11

      A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.

      Proverbs 25:11 (NRSV)

      Our words often trip past each other and stumble us on our journey. Since his stroke, my husband’s speech comes labored, and he sometimes neglects to put all the words into the sentence. I rush ahead and think I know what Jerry’s going to say, but I’m often wrong. For someone who lives with words, works with words, this confusion of meaning with someone I care about is frustrating.

      My words cannot suffice to my heart, wrote Saint Augustine centuries ago, and it’s how I feel when misunderstandings cloud the day already filled with challenge.

      It is a spiritual discipline to find the right word to set down next to another word in a way that reaches across boundaries and distances, wrote Stephanie Paulsell, who teaches the practice of ministry at Harvard Divinity School. Haunting every word is the presence of the word God spoke to reach out to us. In a culture in which words are flung out not as lifelines but as invective, it is an act of resistance to measure our words against the reconciling work of the Word that gives life and hope.

      Today, at least once, I will pause before assuming I know what someone I love means and let the reconciling work of the Word grant life and hope.

      Psalm 25:4-5

      Show me your ways, LORD, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

      Psalm 25:4-5

      I’m making up to-do lists: doctor appointments; medication pickup; remember the blood pressure/weight/heart rate list to share with the cardio rehab people.

      Often in my presentations about writing, I talk about a Harvard study where people with asthma and arthritis were asked to spend twenty minutes, three times a week writing down their stories. Who was driving them crazy, what committee they’d never work on again, how they spent the morning with their best friend. They didn’t have to show their words to anyone or come to any conclusions. A control group spent the same amount of time, but their writing consisted of to-do lists.

      At the end of the trial period, there was a clinically significant reduction in the amount of pain medication needed and the number of asthmatic attacks for the people who told themselves their stories. For the to-do list people? Absolutely no change. I’ve always said those list people might have lied because when I look at my to-do list, I want more pain medication.

      Better than all those lists would be to pause and be taught, to note how I’m feeling this day, to tell my story and witness to how God is intersecting in my life, pulling me closer, opening my heart on days of drain. A short note will do. Lists of things for which I’m grateful. Struggles I write down and then give to God. No need to show it to anyone else.

      Hope swirls within the words I write.

      Proverbs 16:24

      Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.

      Proverbs 16:24

      Much of my writing is wrapped in exploring historical women’s lives. I seek to discover where these women drew their strength from. Did they stand alone, strong as bone? How did they mend when they felt broken? What gave them strength to cross the bridge of a woman’s life, moving from hungering child to giving mother to caring daughter or wife to become that strong woman? What can they show us for our own time of challenge?

      I once asked a group of second graders what the word powerful meant to them. One said, Big and strong like on the playground. Another suggested, Rich. Powerful means lots of money. They speculated back and forth. But one young boy in the front row took

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