5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
I love hope. I know what it is like to live without it. When I feel hopeless there is no bounce in my step, no life in my body, and to be quite honest, I eat bitterness as my food when I feel hopeless. Hope brings life with it, it is substantial, not something that is just passing, like "I hope this happens, or I hope that happens." It's bigger than that and when I eat hope, I breath in the very presence of God. Hope has everything to offer me, bitterness has nothing.
Last time I felt hopeless I experienced heaven's intervention. It was within God's presence that He showed how I had felt hopeless for a very long time. It was the year that Robert had 2 surgery's and had nearly died. Things like that can shake you up. I had also changed my life in other ways, including making myself too busy. It's amazing how too busy can be so draining and not allow you to enter into a life of resting and awareness as to what is going on inside you. It's important to pay attention to what we are thinking and what is nagging us. Loosing sight of that is living life on automatic, which isn't living life but merely maintaining and surviving.
When He reminded of how deplete of hope I had become I was taken aback, because I tend to be high on the hope meter, but as always, He was right. It was here I saw what an amazing commodity hope is and it changed my life. Not only did I see how important it was for me, I began to really pay attention to how important it was for other's as well. We all need hope. Something that keeps us hanging on. Something that we can depend on.
David often said his hope was in God. He knew he could rely on the One that created him. If we put our hope in people we will often be disappointed. If we place it in circumstances we will eventually be confused because of how they turn out, and often not to our expectations. When we put out hope in God we find a safe place for our hope, and an expectation in our heart that keeps us on the edge of our seats, because we know He does not play the game the way we do, He does it better. He does not meet our expectations, which so miss the mark anyway. What He does do, is love us in the circumstance and allows us to see what we could not see before. What He helps us with is to see people through His eyes of love, not through our eyes of demand and need.
Hope is an essential commodity, it carries us to the next place in our lives and relationship with Him. Then the next and then the next. It can be an oasis in the midst of the desert, an unexpected delight in any given moment.
Don't hog all the hope for yourself. Give someone else hope today. Encourage someone in some way, maybe a way you want to be encouraged. I hope you know it will come back to you. It's a law that God wrote into the very fabric of the universe. It's the law of sewing and reaping. Sow some hope today and watch it come back to you. Remember, it does not disappoint.
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Blessings and love,
Suzette
