Christian encouragement

He’s Not Finished Yet

/ Baylee Snelling / 1 Comment

There are days when hope feels like a stranger.
When everything I thought would be — isn’t.
When the pain feels louder than the promise,
and I wonder if this is where the story ends.

I think of Mary.
Weeping at the foot of the cross.
Heart shattered.
Hope buried beneath the weight of what she couldn’t make sense of.

What she didn’t realize was…
Easter was coming.

The silence wasn’t the final word.
The grief wasn’t the whole story.
And the cross wasn’t the end.

Sometimes, I find myself standing in the same kind of ache —
facing heartbreak I didn’t ask for,
surrounded by questions without answers,
unsure of what’s ahead
or if anything good can come from here.

But then I remember…

God doesn’t leave things undone.
He doesn’t abandon stories halfway through.
He doesn’t hand us the pen and walk away.

Even when I can’t see how He’s moving,
He is still writing.
Still redeeming.
Still resurrecting.

The hope I need today might not be in a happy ending —
but in the quiet truth that this isn’t the end.

Because even when all hope seems lost,
my story isn’t over.
And the Author of my life
isn’t finished yet.

Faith in the Flicker

/ Baylee Snelling / 1 Comment

Faith in the Flicker

Some days, my faith isn’t loud.

It doesn’t rise with bold declarations or feel steady and unshakable.

It flickers —
like a candle near an open window,
trembling just to stay lit.

But I’m learning that God doesn’t measure my faith in volume.

He sees the quiet yes.
The whispered prayers.
The breath I take before I try again.
The tears I cry while still choosing to believe.

He doesn’t shame me when I’m unsure.
He doesn’t back away when I’m tired.
He doesn’t need me to be brave to stay close.

Even the smallest spark is enough for Him to work with.

Because He’s not waiting on my strength —
He’s offering me His.

And even when I feel like I’m barely holding on,
I’m still held.

The Strength Fear Tries to Steal

/ Baylee Snelling / Leave a comment

I’ve wasted so many todays
worrying about tomorrow.

Not intentionally.
Not because I wanted to.
But because anxiety is sneaky like that —
convincing you that if you think it through just one more time,
you’ll feel better.

Spoiler: you don’t.

I read something recently that really stuck out to me:
“What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows; but, ah! it empties today of its strength.”
— Alexander McLaren

And I felt it.

Because fear doesn’t just whisper worst-case scenarios —
it drains the light from moments that were meant to hold joy.
It robs us of the strength we do have for right now,
by convincing us we need to hoard it for what might come later.

But we weren’t made to live that way.
Not crouched in fear.
Not rehearsing pain that hasn’t even happened.

Today is still here.
And it still matters.

God didn’t promise we’d be fearless.
But He did promise He’d be with us.
And that is more than enough.

Maybe peace isn’t the absence of what we fear —
but the presence of the One who knows how to carry us through it.

So for today —
not tomorrow, just today —
I’m choosing presence over panic.
Trust over spirals.
And strength over fear.

The Turn I Almost Missed

/ Baylee Snelling / 1 Comment

I thought about writing today —
about joy in the storm.
But I hesitated.
It felt like something I’d written too many times before.
Like maybe I should find a new angle,
a different message.

So I got up.
Did some laundry.
Checked a few boxes off the list.
And opened my devotional —
Watching for the Morning by Vaneetha Rendall Risner.
A liferaft of a book in this season.

The title for today?
“The Greatest Turn in Scripture.”

And beneath it, these words:

“Yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.”
—Lamentations 3:21–23

I stopped.
Because I knew.
God was speaking to me — again.
Through a verse I’ve read a hundred times.
Through a theme I thought I’d already written to death.

But maybe that’s the point.

Even Jeremiah —
mid-anguish, breathless and undone —
stopped.

He didn’t forget the pain.
He didn’t pretend it didn’t exist.
But he remembered something deeper.
“Yet this I call to mind…”
That even when everything felt lost,
God’s mercies were not.

And suddenly, hope entered the story.

I almost didn’t write this.
I almost brushed past the very word I needed.
Because I thought I’d already said it.

But today reminded me —
some truths are worth repeating.
Some mercies are new, even in familiar form.

I’ll never forget the storms.
But I’ll also never stop looking for the joy
that rises in the middle of them.

“I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for Him.’”
—Lamentations 3:24

A Quiet Turning

/ Baylee Snelling / Leave a comment

There are moments
when I feel it rising —
a quiet tug toward old thoughts,
familiar patterns that once promised safety
but only ever gave me silence and shame.

It doesn’t shout.
It whispers.
You’re too much.
You’re not enough.
You’ll never get it right.

And for a moment,
I believe it again.
Not because it’s true —
but because it’s been loud for so long.

I carry those echoes
into rooms where I smile.
Into the spaces where I show up,
even when I feel unsteady.

But lately, I’m learning
to pause before the story runs away with me.
To ask:
What am I feeling?
Where is this coming from?
And what’s the truth I know beneath the noise?

I remember:
I am loved.
I am not a burden.
I am not the sum of my worst days.

And from that place —
even if it’s just a small step forward —
I respond differently.
More gently.
More freely.

This is what healing sounds like sometimes.
Not loud or linear —
just a quiet turning toward peace
when the pull of the past returns.

And I carry this quiet work of healing into the way I love — gently, intentionally, even on the hardest days.