Life in a broken world is filled with challenges and disappointments. People disappoint us, circumstances disappoint us, we disappoint ourselves... and if we're really honest, at times we feel like God disappoints us.
Hope, therefore, is a crucial part of life. It offers perspective and motivation beyond current pain or challenges, just like a mother can endure the pain of childbirth because she knows the reward of holding her baby will be worth it.
But recurring, failed hope crushes us. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick" (Pr. 13:12).
Has your hope been dashed again and again? Are you waiting on something that still hasn't come? Depression and hopelessness from delayed or failed hope can swallow us. I believe Jeremiah felt it too when he described his troubles in Lamentations:
"My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, 'My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.'" Lam. 3:17-18, ESV
It's not wrong to wrestle with hopelessness—it's part of living in a sin-cursed world. But if we stay stuck in the spiral of despair, we will lose motivation to live.
Jeremiah gives us a beautiful example of what it means to speak the truth to your own heart in the midst of seeming impossibility:
"Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this..." Lam. 3:21, NLT
Jeremiah's barely clinging to hope. His desperate circumstances probably make him feel like hope doesn't exist. Yet despite the hopelessness in and around him, he dares to hope in the steadfast love of God. In the One greater than the darkness surrounding him. In the One redeeming the worst of circumstances.
We too need this kind of tenacity. We need to desperately cling to hope outside of ourselves when things are at their worst. In spite of flailing emotions, we need to dare to hope in something, Someone, who is greater than our greatest fears or pain.
Whatever you're facing, dare to hope today in the steadfast love of God. He is the only source of hope that will never fail you.
No comments:
Post a Comment