It’s late afternoon and the sun is streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows and doors of our living room. The dryer is humming in the kitchen. The wonderful meaty mixture for the World’s Best Lasagna is simmering on the stove.

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The baby who suffered with gas this afternoon is in his baby gym on the floor beside me, cooing and figuring out how to make everything jingle when he kicks his feet.

His big brother is in his high chair working on tracing letters and colouring the pictures on each page.

I’m pausing in my heart to give thanks.

We feel a little like we’re facing giants. Finding the finances to cover another transcontinental move. Selling our furniture. Selling our car. Saying good-bye to South Africa and the family we love here. HH needs a spousal visa and his interview is next week. Baby Brother needs a passport and the process is moving in African time. There are a lot of metaphorical ducks to get in a row and they sometimes feel kind of like boulders. Big, daunting, immovable, grumpy-faced boulders.

But part of faith is sometimes trusting that it’s going to be okay, no matter what.

I recently found myself pondering one of the descriptions of the woman in Proverbs 31:

She is clothed with strength and dignity, she can laugh at the days to come. {v. 25}

Other translations say she smiles at the future or she laughs without fear of the future.

Really? Who does that?

How do you look at the future and laugh? Is it a flippant decision to laugh and leave worrying about the future for another day? Or the impudence of a lion cub Simba declaring, “I walk on the wild side. I laugh in the face of danger,” and then getting into trouble with the hyenas? {You’ve seen the Lion King, right?}

It must have something to do with courage. And a purposeful decision to trust an unknown future to a known God.

The woman’s attitude may have been built on the confidence that she was walking in the ways of the Lord. Each verse demonstrates another way in which she honours the Lord with her actions. She is clothed with strength and dignity… and having put on all this godliness, she must be a person of consistency and firmness of mind. She’ll know to expect difficult times — in this world we will have tribulation. But our actions — our decisions to walk in God’s ways, and our beliefs — our decisions to believe God’s truth, demonstrate that, like her, we trust God to meet us and see us through.

It takes faith to look ahead and trust that everything is going to be okay, even though we don’t know what tomorrow will bring. But keeping that frame of thankfulness around my life, I am more often see God’s sovereign hand in places I would not have seen it before.

He is clearly moving. There is reason to take off my shoes. As Psalm 100 describes it, we enter the gates with thanksgiving, and we enter the courts with praise. We remember that the Lord is good, and His love endures forever. Why should we fear?

Can you laugh at the days to come? What’s holding you back?

xCC