Life is really hard. I mean, it’s great, but it’s really hard. We all have those days when, half in jest, we pray “Hey Jesus, if you’re thinking of coming back soon, now would be a reeeeeeally good time.”
Sometimes it seems relentless, unending, even hopeless. The days flow on, one after another, like the incessant never-ending march. We didn’t really plan for this, but the days go on whether we liked it or not. And now we’re in this life, we just have to keep going.
When will this burdensome time be over? We think. When will it get less difficult? I’m so tired.
At times like these, usually the Bible is one of the last places we go. We’re too busy trying to do life. But that’s why we need it. The more we strain to get through the day, the more we tend to rely on our own initiative. Head down, bum up, organising, planning, running things, keeping small people alive, happy and safe, just managing to keep putting one foot in front of the other…… It is easy to fall into self-reliance.
But that’s where we have gone off course, and we need to get back to God’s word.
God gets us. He so gets us. The place where he communicates with us is the place we find people who have gone before who have done and felt the exact same thing as us. And they rest in the pages of the bible so God can redirect our attention to the right place.
The book of Micah is one such place. Micah was a prophet in the 8th century BC – it was just before the Assyrians wiped out the northern kingdom of Israel and came right to the door of the southern kingdom of Judah. War is coming. The Assyrians are coming. When will there be peace?
Micah tells them in chapter 4 that God’s peace will come. The law will go out from him and he will judge and settle disputes. The people, Micah says, will “beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.” (4:3b). There will be no need for these weapons. They will turn weapons of war into tools of the farm. Prosperity. Fertility. Peace.
Then he says:
“Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid.” (4:4).
Can you imagine that? Sitting somewhere in complete safety and tranquility. Master or mistress of your own little spot. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. Nothing to lose.
What would it look like for you? For me it’s a late afternoon, sunny but cool. The light casting a faint orange glow over the countryside. The sound of the breeze in the trees – not even birds chirping. Breathing in the sweet air with the faint whiff of hay and honeysuckle. My kids playing and laughing.
Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. Nothing to lose.
Peace. God’s peace. That’s what he promises in Micah. One day, this will be real. It won’t look like that – who knows what it will look like? But it will feel like that. One day we will be there, in God’s full peace. In his presence. He promised it. He communicated it, and he is faithful. It will happen.
How does that change the tough days? Hope.
It lifts me because I know what sitting under my own vine would look like, what it would feel like. I pray for the day I will sit under my own vine, but I also know it is a certainty, and so my bad days become not so bad. I can imagine being in God’s peace and it calms me.
It even pushes me forward – if that is a certainty, what should I be doing before I can relax under my vine? What is the work that’s still to be done? That drives me back to God again. What shall I do, God? What can I do so that when I sit under my vine, I do so as a good and faithful servant? Complete, replete, God’s own. Forever.
Sleep well, friends. Be well. Be hopeful. God has promised and it will happen.
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