Hope

What do you hope for? Where does your hope lie? What are your hopes and dreams? So I start to think about what I’ve been “hoping” for lately. I’ve been hoping for peace. For clarity. For relief of stress. I’ve been hoping that going back to work will go smoothly. I’ve been hoping that I don’t get tired and drained and that I won’t spiral down again. My hope in the world is dwindling and I hope that it gets better again before it gets even worse.  I have all these things that I’m hoping for. But it’s simply semantics. These are desires, not hopes.

Well then how do you define hope?

For a follower of Christ, hope is not what you desire to achieve or have things for yourself or anyone else. Hope is our relationship with Christ himself. We hope for our meeting with Christ. Our hope lies in relating with Christ. And we dream to be united with Christ.

“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.” Romans 8:24-25

We hope for our relationship with Christ. We hope that we can make it stronger. We can spend more time with him reading his word, talking to him in prayer. As a community we can gather to read the word and reflect and eagerly get to prayer and pray for each other in our hopes in Christ. We can hope with joy. We hope for Jesus’ presence.

Hope is the confidence we have in Christ that he will do his will. He has given each of us gifts of the Spirit so that we can work together to build up his body to do his will.