Hope in the Hard Times
What do you hope for? What are you looking forward to with confidence during these troubling times?
Hope is a powerful force. Real hope has substance. I don’t mean “I hope it’s sunny next week” because I can’t control that outcome. I don’t mean “I hope my team win the cup next year” because even a great team still needs to be lucky.
As a Christian my experience of following Jesus shows me that hope is often anchored in the unseen, yet it is as solid and real as my hand in front of me. This is how St Paul described his experience of a living hope – a man who endured ship-wrecks and beatings for his faith:
“We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us…When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.” (Romans 5:3-6)
Paul’s hope was rooted not in a lofty idea but in the historical fact of Jesus. He knew salvation was his, which is a hope both for the present and the future.
Hope is what drives a person on, past even the most desperate of circumstances. Those people who survived concentration camps will tell you that it was the power of hope which enabled them to face each new day. Two generations later, another man who battled against the odds, Barak Obama, called this ‘The Audacity of Hope’.
This kind of hope is concrete. It’s not the same as ‘staying positive’ in the midst of challenges. It’s not a fickle feeling, it’s not an emotion. Real hope becomes a bedrock, something we can build our lives upon even when circumstances around us are unstable.
What do you hope in? At this time of shaking “I pray that God, the source of hope, will fill you completely with joy and peace because you trust in him” (Romans 15:13).
Photo Credits:
Good News by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Romans 5:1-11 by Steve Thomason