There is a Hope...

 Hi friends,

I was looking through my oldest journaling Bible the other day at pages that I haven't illustrated yet, and as I scanned this page in Jeremiah 31, this phrase in verse 17 really hit me: 'There is a hope for your future, declares the Lord.' This verse was exactly what I needed to hear at that point, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

While this verse is not addressed to us personally in the context of Jeremiah, it is addressed to a people who are in a dire situation. They were being exiled from their homes and their land, and it didn't seem at all like they could look to the future with hope. Jeremiah is a pretty bleak book, with a lot of prophecies of judgment and cries of anguish and despair. Yet in this middle of all this (very deserved) trouble that the people of Israel found themselves in, God speaks hope over them. In the midst of judgment there is mercy. In the midst of sorrow there is hope. When we reflect on this today, it is clear that we can take encouragement from this too, because we have an even greater hope. We have Jesus. No matter what goes on around us, what sorrow we face, even what consequences we reap for our sin, there is a hope for our future in Jesus. Let's cling to this hope and look to Jesus for encouragement in times where there only seems to be despair. There IS a hope for your future.

I used the gorgeous new Blooming Anemones stamp set on this page. I stamped the images onto watercolour card, coloured, then cut out. You can see what they looked like completed here:

Once I had created a background using acrylic paints, I stamped the chicken wire image from Texture Tiles 6 on the bottom half of the page, then glued pieces of the large flower image to the top and bottom, trimming around the edges of the page. I then added the single flower and one of the leaves left over from the larger image. The text was stamped with a combination of the new Curly Girl Alpha, Marker Alpha, Choose Faith, and Women of Praise. I added a couple of butterflies from Made New which I stamped on vellum and die-cut using the coordinating dies. 

Whatever you may be facing, no matter how difficult it may be, remember that God has declared that there is hope for your future in Jesus Christ.

Be blessed...

x Amy x