Typhoons, Promises, and Hope...

As I write this, the rain pours outside my balcony window. It's true, there is a typhoon on its way. Check out this link:
http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/JAXX0013.html
No worries, though. Typhoons basically just mean days on end of nothing but rain, rain, and more rain. Right now it is coming down in sheets... it's hard to imagine where all this rain comes from.

The rain makes me more pensive and I think about the song by Mercy Me, "Word of God Speak" and there is a line that says, "Word of God speak, would you pour down like rain, washing my eyes to see, your majesty"

And I feel like that is true of my time now. God is washing my eyes, turning my eyes to Him, to see His majesty and to be filled with nothing but His satisfying presence.

This time in Utsunomiya has been good for time in the Word. I have been reading through the Bible, my eyes stopping at the word, "will" knowing that when God says, "I will..." it is a promise that something is going to happen. Also, I took some time to read through Hebrews 11 and prayed through the idea that even when we can't see something, it doesn't mean God isn't working. "And all these(people), though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect."

I have found so much hope in thinking about our own Promise Land and how we have a Home built for us not by human hands but by God. I feel like a foreigner (not only in Japan) but in my own skin.

God is working. God is fulfilling. God is returning for us.
...and that encourages me.