It’s pretty awesome when your sister-in-law is the dorm director, and you walk into your son’s very first dorm room ever, to discover his uncle has lined his desk with potato chips and has filled the fridge with soda. Although I was dubious about the big supply of Mountain Dew, it was really special to know Uncle Mark was thinking about my boy before he arrived.

Today I want you to know that Jesus does like Uncle Mark did –goes out ahead and prepares good and encouraging things for us.

In Revelation 22:13, Jesus says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

A year ago, when Matt and I started whispering anxiously about college ideas for Caleb, Jesus was there. And when I was thinking for sure my heart was going to break to have my boy leave? Well, Jesus had gone out ahead of me, to prepare encouragement through the whole process.

I burst into tears on our last morning in Texas, but I told Matt it wasn’t because we were leaving Caleb. It was because of where we were leaving Caleb.

It was all so good.

The financial aid, the caring people, the strong Christian ethic on campus, the perfect work study job –everything reassured my heart that we had made an excellent decision in sending Caleb to UMHB. When we left, I felt joy in the place where I had expected to feel stabbing pain.

I can’t say enough times on this blog that God is an encourager, and he is the Omega. He is the end.

Put those two things together, and we have a God who always goes out ahead of us to set up encouragement for the end of the thing. We never know what that’s going to look like, but we can count on it sitting there waiting for us, like a shelf full of Doritos and a fridge full of Mountain Dew.

So whatever your hard thing is looming in the future –I’m guessing something you’ve scratched on the calendar and you anxiously wonder how you’re going to survive –God is already there.

He is the Omega.

While you’re here at the beginning, he’s ahead of you.

Abundant encouragement will be waiting for you when you get there.