Last night while lying in bed with the light on, I looked around my room. In the quiet comfort of home, I studied family photos on the wall. On my dresser stood a half-finished painting I started last summer—a landscape of a place I love. The feather comforter over my body felt light as a cloud. A fan gently droned in the corner. How easy it is to take it all for granted—to go to sleep in clean sheets, peace, and safety.

Across the world from me in a Sudanese prison cell, a woman’s fate hangs in the balance. Though she has just given birth to a baby girl and has her toddler son with her, she is shackled like a criminal for being a Christian. She faces 100 lashes and death by hanging. But she will not renounce Christ. By the time this posts, I don’t know if she will be alive or dead.

I thought about that all day. It’s easy to pick up the concerns of the world. In my mind, it compounds very quickly. For instance, at this moment, thousands of children are crossing our southern border desperate to stay in America. Iraq is being overtaken with terror beyond belief. Many days it feels like I only have two choices: get overwhelmed or get numb. I’m not the ostrich type.

Yet as I laid in the stillness of my room last night, I wondered…God, where are You in all this? What on earth is happening? What kind of world will my children and grandchildren face?

I do feel we are living in a critical time of history with many unprecedented changes. The Lord is shaking the earth so that everything that remains is unshakable. Hebrews 12:27

But in times like this, what is our hope?

For years now, I can’t even count how frequently I see the number 722. On clocks, receipts, airplane tickets, confirmation numbers, license plates, you name it—722 comes up every other day. A pastor friend once said: when you see a number sequence more often than coincidence, search it out in Scripture. So I looked up every possible verse and read the context around it.

Though the study proved interesting, only one verse stood out:Continue reading