What Does God Have in Store?

Canning before the long winter was once a part of life for most homemakers in America. My grandmother was one of those homemakers, living with my grandfather and her two little boys on a farm in northwest Indiana.  There, she had a large garden in the side yard, along with two large apple trees that offered yellow delicious apples in the fall.  She spent hours canning vegetables and apples from the farm’s bounty. There were years when she even canned beef the family received from a local farmer’s choice cows. One year, after a bumper crop of tomatoes, my dad took a jar of tomato juice to school every day over the winter months. He always said that he didn’t get so much as a sniffle that year because of the vitamin-packed juice!

Having home-canned foods in the house was a lifeline during the Depression when my dad was growing up on his family’s farm. While his town had a couple of small markets, most folks relied in large part on their own gardens to see them through the winter months when many of them couldn’t get into town as the snow flew and the roads iced over.

The bible is also filled with the many things that God Himself has in store for us.  We can share in His blessings of hope, contentment, peace, joy, and the most wonderful bounty of all–faith in Christ and His gift of salvation to us.  But embracing all the wonderful gifts He has in store means embracing the truth that He also stores wrath (righteous anger) against evil deeds and those who willingly continue to perpetuate them:

For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, Romans 1:18

We can choose for ourselves whether we will receive all the good things God has in store for us.  When we truly understand His love and all the good things He wishes to bestow on us, we will find it impossible to willingly choose ungodliness and unrighteousness as a way of life.