Hope

Yesterday, I heard this line in a song:

"Hope has a way of turning its face to you, just when you least expect it.”
(Sara Groves, “It Might Be Hope” from the Tell Me What You Know album)


There is little doubt in my mind that the last two months have been two of the most trying I have lived through. Dreams I’ve held were dashed beyond recovery. Yet in this strange, desolate place, I’ve found something I thought I already possessed. I found HOPE. While this is not my first encounter with hope, I have to confess that this place does not remotely resemble the place my left brained, logical personality expected to find it. Hope carries such a positive connotation, I think I expected to find it in some better, more appealing place. The situation in which I currently reside seems much more like the kind of place that would take hope from me and leave me in a state of despair.

I have been guiltily of thinking of hope in such childish ways: “I hope I get . . .” , “I hope so and so happens.” These last two months have taught me that hope is something so much more. It is an emotion, an attitude, a gift, an assurance. It is more than my wishes and even more than my dreams. It is the assurance that my Redeemer will bring those dreams to fruition in His own way. It is when His way makes absolutely no sense from the human perspective, that He gives me hope that carries me to the place where His plans and dreams for me cast loving shadows on my tiny little dreams. Oh, I’m not in that place yet, but I feel hope carrying me there.

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.