Hope

"If we cannot look ahead through all the unknown and have HOPE, then what do we really have , and what are we really living for?"

Friends of mine wrote this in their Christmas letter and I've been mulling it over for days now. Where does my hope truly lie? It's easy to say I hope in the Lord when all is going well, when everything has turned out okay, but in the midst of crisis, it's also easy to see all the superficial things I really put my hope in.

"Blessed are those who mourn..." because those who mourn have the opportunity to know, to understand, that the Lord really is the only One, the only relationship, the One who beyond all circumstances, is our earthly and eternal refuge. He only disappoints when my hope is not in Him, but rather in what I think my life should look like especially when compared to someone else.

My hope is not in Him if I so bitterly lament the further, inevitable deterioration of this already crippled, temporal body. I'm not saying that this will be easy or enjoyable or that He won't provide any physical comfort because He has and most certainly will, but that my hope is in Him when I rejoice in the fact that this life, and certainly the next, is about so much more than whether I'm free from such aches, pains, and further limitations.

"Now may the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word" 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17