5 Tuesdays to…Hope

Why hope? Hope is so hard to define, yet it’s what we cling to. So maybe it’s time to not only say it but believe, know it, count on it.

Today is my birthday – I hope I don’t look my age, I hope I’m wiser than I was ten years ago, I hope I continue to have good health. But these things are so surfacey. I obsess about age while I have friends who enjoy the milestones. Wiser is not something that just happens but is gained. And health, even in the best circumstances, can still fail. Hope has no effect on these things.

Hope placed in the right thing – or wrong thing – has an everlasting effect. “Then they will have the hope of eternal life God promised long ago. And God never tells a lie!” (Titus 1:2 CEV)

In today’s dictionary hope is defined as a ‘feeling of expectation or desire for something to happen’. Can’t get any fluffier than that. The ‘archaic’ definition – meaning what the word originally meant in our language is: trust that something will happen.

“Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” (Hebrews 11:1 NLT)

So if hope is all about trust, then our hope is no more certain than who or what we trust in. And yet, maybe like me, you find your trust is genuine but doubt is a close neighbor. Something like this: I absolutely trust God is real, that Jesus lived, died and rose again, that eternity with God awaits all who believe in Jesus. But…my doubts make me wonder about things that just aren’t in my control.

If that’s you, then we’re in for a journey together over the next few weeks – an adventure. Along the way it is my prayer that trust increases, hope looms large, and that elusive light at the end of the tunnel begins to envelope us. “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen” (Epheisans 3:20-21NIV)