Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.

Jeremiah 32:17

Over the past few months, two friends of mine have lost their wives at young ages, both due to a fight with cancer. Both have been on my prayer list for a long time and they continue to be on that list although the focus will now change somewhat as they navigate the loss in many ways. One friend told me a couple of weeks ago, he is now planning life for a party of one. It is quite a challenge as I think about it the “what ifs” in my own life.

In times when you feel forgotten or helpless, where do you find encouragement?

Maybe more than any verse in the Old Testament, I have found this confident expression of faith and hope in the verse above from Jeremiah as a source of strength over the last few years. But as I read through the context of his statement, I also rediscovered a man who looked at an impossible situation through eyes of confidence in God.

Jeremiah had prophesied and witnessed the destruction of his country and his people as many were led away into exile. Once Jerusalem was destroyed, there must have been a sense of finality to the whole situation. How could the country be restored, the lives of the people redeemed and the city and temple rebuilt? Yet, earlier in the chapter, Jeremiah was instructed to buy a plot of land as a sign of hope that in the future, “houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land” (Jeremiah 32: 15).

It was this act that spurred Jeremiah’s proclamation of faith in verse seventeen above.

If you’re facing one of those impossible situations, put that verse to memory. If God can create the universe and all that is in it, then surely He is able to do the impossible. “Is there any too difficult for God?” (Jeremiah 32:27b).