I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. Ephesians 1 :18-19a

Paul praises the Ephesians for their faith and their love. He prays for their wisdom and knowledge of God. Then he prays that they know all that He has called them to, all the full riches of what they have inherited.

What would it mean to truly understand that? Is there anyone who ever really has? The Ephesians were gentiles. The Hebrew God unknown, even forbidden to them throughout their lives. Now they find that he included them too. That they are sons of the inheritance, fully accepted by a Father they had never before acknowledged. How much history did they know? Were they eager to study and know this God, to explore his promises and gifts to his people?

I wonder how they could be anything but, and yet how much do we really know? Where is the eager impatience to know all we can of the gift we have been given, to know all God has done for us, to rest in the hope of "his incomparably great power"? And how would our lives change if we ever did truly understand?

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease. Genesis 8:22

Seedtime and harvest; the work of sowing, the anxiety of waiting, the joyous celebration of plenty. All to do it again the next year. An endless cycle of focus and meaning and growth; of learning, and changing, and redirecting.

It seems like I should have my life figured out by now. Four grown kids, a mid-term career, and yet the constant question of where do I belong, what should I be doing, where do I go from here? It's an incredible comfort somehow, through the all the uncertainty, to see this time as a natural cycle, as a prerequisite to a new harvest, a new celebration of what God will provide.