Confidence

I still remember feeling invincible.  In hindsight, I do not know why I was confident.  Sure, I could code.  Granted, I owned my own car.  It was a given that I knew how to work.  Everything was within my reach.  Nothing would or could happen to me.  I carried a blessing and I knew it.  In hindsight, my arrogance was incredible.  With reflection, I was teetering on total failure.  I had no idea just how vulnerable I really was.  I could not imagine what was going to come at me.  In all extremes, relationships good and bad, faith expressed and lost, words honored and abandoned, life pulled on the threads of my confidence.
 
In the old days, on some days even now, I need my step checked.  I lose sight of the past.  I forget just how critical God, family, and friends are to my course.  I wander blissfully ignorant of what is in the present.  It is as if I am mindless. 
 
The words of the Spirit haunt my thoughts.  “Well, start thinking, playgirl [/boy].  You're acting like the center of the universe, smugly saying to yourself, ‘I'm Number One.  There's nobody but me.  I'll never be a widow [/widower], I'll never lose my children.’”  (Isaiah 47.8) 
 
I have many reasons to be confident.  My behavior is not one of them.  My accomplishments are not one of them.  My power, status, or anything else related to what I have, am, or will do not make the list of reasons.  I can only be confident because God is confident.  There is nothing else.  There will never be any other reason. 
 
Today is full of fears, uncertainties, and doubts.  It is only natural to worry about what is to come.  The only reasons that we revel in yesterday is that we know we have made it through!  Tomorrow, even today is totally unknown.  Things we trust will fail.  Things we depend on will not be there.  There we anticipate will disappear.
 
There is one thing we can depend on, God.  The Spirit is here.  Hope is Present.