Sustaining Hope

So many in our culture reject the idea of hope in a large part I think because they never want to be disappointed. Because who likes to be disappointed??

We’ve all had things that we hoped for (but really just wished for) that didn’t come to pass. Relationships, promotions, opportunities, healings. In our mind our relationship with all of those things was defined by hope, but it was not the kind of hope that we’re talking about.

The kind of hope that we are talking about cannot disappoint us, though it may take our entire lives - even past this life and into the next - for those hopes to come to fruition. That’s a long time to wait. That’s a long time to keep nurturing hope with what seems like very little feedback to maintain it. 

But that’s how we approach hope from a human standpoint - something we have to sustain in the face of all kinds of things seeking to prove us wrong. 

But that’s not the reality. The reality is that hope is something we allow God to continue nurturing IN us. Said another way, it is not our hope that we are responsible for maintaining, but simply the relationship with God that feeds our hope. 

It reminds me of marriage. In a marriage, it’s not your job to make yourself continuously feel love for your spouse, but it is your job to maintain the relationship with with your spouse that creates fertile ground for love to keep blossoming. 

It seems terrifying to think that you have to keep a white-knuckled grip on love and if it ever slips away then it’s all over. Who can deal with that pressure? What about your bad days? Quickly the whole thing because Anxiety Fest 2020. But it’s much less daunting to simply remember that you need to talk to your spouse every day. Find out about their day. Maybe make a few small efforts to speak to them in their native love language. 

That we can do. 

That requires a little bit of us, and not more than we can handle. It’s the same way with God. We don’t have to keep a white knuckled grip on all these strands of faith and hope and all the other virtues, praying that we don’t let one slip out of our grasp, vanishing to the sea to never be recovered again. We simply have to talk to our beloved Father every day. Share our day with him. Let him love us and return right praise To him. 

Hope it’s a gift from God that he will continue to give as long as we keep the relationship with the Giver open.

With joy!

Jill