To Rise. To Stand. To Deliver

When I bike to work these days the world still lays in quiet darkness. These mornings have their own beauty and special feel to it. There is a privacy and intimacy connected to it which I cherish. These moments are for myself and spending them with God every morning is quite amazing.
Today it made me think of the verse in Proverbs 31 where it says: "She gets up before dawn to prepare breakfast for her household and plan the day’s work for her servant girls."
I personally am a big fan of Proverbs 31. It is a constant reminder of the woman I desire to be and an encouragement in daily life. If she can do it, I can do it.

But this morning this verse in particular came to mind. There is so much in rising before dawn and I love how she while it is still dark outside prepares nourishment for her household.

Now, we do live in pretty dark times and it is easy to get frustrated with a lot of things. In these dark times I believe it is important that we rise up to nourish our household. I believe this to be true in the most literal sense as in preparing food for our household because there is power in gathering but I also believe it to be true figuratively to rise up in the darkness and nourish our house, may that be family, friends, church, anything. And with nourishment I mean spiritual nourishment. We need to take stand in the darkness of the world and stand up for the lost and broken, those without a voice, those who can not stand for themselves. We might not be able to do it all, but I believe we can all do something. I believe it is our daily decisions to rise up and do something. May this be by gathering a group of friends and praying or by fundraising money or by actually reaching out a hand to the people around you.

I did a little research on this verse using a concordance and looking into the Hebrew version of the verse and the verb to rise up, to stand up actually stands for the following words: arise, assume, carry, stop, endure, establish, restore strengthen.
Then the word night has the following meanings: night, suffering and weeping, dubious, radical
And the word to give means: abandon, deliver, prevent, roar

Wow, that's all that's left to say. I want to be the kind of woman who restores and strengthens and stops and endures, the kind of woman who delivers and prevents and gives!

So as this year is ending I am starting to think of things ahead and I guess this morning my desire to rise up in darkness and be the light just grew and it is always good to have something to work on. That being said I hope you are enjoying this Advent. It is a special time. May we not forget why we celebrate Christmas.

xoxo

Ramona

PS: Some of you might have noticed that I am not doing my Calendar this year. It is not that I am not inspired every day but it wasn't time and place to do it this year. If you would like to read up on the past years you can do so here, here, here and here. Some of the video links might not work any more. My apologies.

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