The Expectant Heart

Leonid Brezhnev’s widow startled the grim communist guards by making the sign of the cross on the chest of the deceased—who had been leader of the Soviet Union, an officially atheistic nation. Gary Thomas wrote, “There in the citadel of secular, atheistic power, the wife of the man who had run it all hoped that her husband was wrong,” and that Jesus “might yet have mercy on her husband.”

The soul, symbolized by the heart, has an expectancy of God’s ultimate intervention. One atheist declared he was fighting despair with expectancy. “I know I shall die in hope,” said Jean-Paul Sartre, a month before his death. Sadly, though, Sartre said, “hope needs a foundation.” 

The person whose heart’s expectancy is based on faith in the living God rejoices, because he or she has a firm foundation for the heart’s expectancy.

TODAY’S FOCUS
Jot in your journal the things you would expect from the hands of the loving, merciful God.