Listen:
Psalm 31:21-24
Praise be to the Lord,
for he showed me the wonders of his love
when I was in a city under siege.
In my alarm I said,
“I am cut off from your sight!”
Yet you heard my cry for mercy
when I called to you for help.
Love the Lord, all his faithful people!
The Lord preserves those who are true to him,
but the proud he pays back in full.
Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the Lord.
Consider:
Hope is sometimes a hard thing to catch hold of…especially when we are in the grips of the very human experience of LIFE! Hope feels like a fancy word we use to avoid talking about “real” stuff… but so many examples of scripture, as the Psalm above, point to that concept of HOPE being the very thing that offers courage and fortitude, even when seemingly “under siege.”
So what does that hope look like? What grit must our hope have to withstand the throws of life and human messiness all around us? Rachel Held Evans said “God invites us to take the risk of love.” I believe God also invites us to risk hoping…hope that we are not alone, even when it feels like it, hope that we are more than the sum of any failures we are counting, hope that we can see, feel, taste, touch, and smell the infinite love that a God who created us good has for each of us. From the beginning of human history, examples abound of faith, in hope, lifting people above and beyond the circumstance of a moment. (Perhaps google a few quotes of faith from those experiencing the Holocaust, or those in spaces of war). THAT is a hope only God can provide. And it is the very thing that will save us, again and again and again.
Respond:
Take a moment to list three things you struggle to see as hopeful in this moment/season of your life. Be honest with yourself as you assess those things you’ve carried without much hope of change, or pardon, or relief. Now, choose one, just one, to focus on finding space for hope today. How might you see the space for hope in this situation? What conversation might you have with God to express some of the fears around that situation which will open up some room for the courage to let hope grow?
Pray:
Stay with us, God, in the grit and grind of life…stay close enough that your hope radiates into our very beings, that we may feel it, be warmed by it, and may build strength enough from it to warm others. Amen.
