Today I think about Billy Graham’s quote:
“The will of God will not take us where the grace of God cannot sustain us.”
It’s a perfect little statement when we consider all the places God might take us, all the new seasons of life ahead, and all the new problems, complications, or inevitable disappointments of being human. If I am afraid, I remember that God will not take me where He cannot also sustain me.
I’m rejoicing in His sustaining grace.
I also consider today the lines from the poem and Christmas carol composed by Edmund Sears in 1849, “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Sears writes in the third stanza:
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world hath suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring:
O hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
I listen to the invitation to “hush the noise” to hear the angels sing. I think of the love song of the angels who are singing back to Christ His love song to us. I think of everything happening in the heavenly realms that I cannot hear. I consider what it means to hush the noise, both external and internal, to “hear the angels sing.” And I want to sing along.
I’m rejoicing with the angels about Jesus.
If nothing else goes the way we planned about Christmas, we can remember God’s sustaining grace and how always–no matter what’s happening–we can hush the noise and worship.