Fresh Challenges, Fresh Mercies

This post is written to link with Five Minute Friday: write for five minutes on a one-word prompt. The prompt today is “fresh.”

Sometimes I wonder why life can’t just be easy.

It seems at the moment that every new day throws up fresh challenges, and it’s easy to be worn down by that.

The uncertainty over the ongoing lockdown restrictions, a situation where it looked like everything was falling into place only for it to pop back out again, a difficult conversation where I knew the words I was going to say were not what the other person wanted to hear, the urge to speak up and take action when it would be easier to stay silent and do nothing – it’s been a challenging week.

But fortunately along with fresh challenges come fresh mercies.

“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” (Lamentations 3:22-24 NLT)

He never promised it would be easy, but he does promise to provide all we need, one step at a time – the strength to endure, the words to speak, the courage to act, a hope that goes beyond our circumstances.

Fresh mercies every day.

And we need to seek them every day. Jesus taught us to pray for our “daily bread,” not for a week’s supply. We may not see the many twists and turns in the path ahead, but if we look to him he will guide our next step.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matthew 6:34 NLT)