HAVING HOPE

If there is an obvious trend I see knocking down our society it is so many living without hope. The absence of hope is usually followed by the absence of faith and love. There are many things that can make us hopeless. For example, being strung together in chains and put in the hole of a ship to become someone’s black slave somewhere, or sent off without hope like the Cherokees, Choctaws and dozens of other tribes to live happily ever after on a reservation somewhere away from their ancestral land. Or as my own family, was uprooted with two and half million others to leave the Midwest during the Dust Bowl and migrate west. This just seems much greater than a toilet paper shortage or a supply chain inconvenience. But hopelessness is whatever the hopeless one perceives it to be.

Paul, an apostle, was the champion of faith, hope and love encouraging others in much of his writing to trust the Lord for all three. Paul wrote in Romans 8:22-25:

“For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

“We wait for it with patience” is the tough part because we are hoping for something “we do not see.” We are trained for ‘seeing is believing’ and hope is difficult to see. Let faith rise up.

“I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus