Thinking About Hope
Nettie Bozanich
 
I’ve been thinking about hope a lot lately.  Actually, I’ve been thinking more about hopelessness – about that feeling of helplessness when murmurs of sadness seep into every crevice and life is a simple, edgy dark corner. 
 
I think hopelessness is not uncommon in our society – what is common is our unwillingness to bring words to such pain & to share it with others.  Maybe its the nature of hopelessness itself that we keep it such a secret.  Why cry out when we believe that there is no hope to improve, to rise up, to overcome, to live again? 
 
I’ve been thinking, too, about where we put our hope.  Maybe the reason why we lose hope is because we are putting it in the wrong places.  Everything here on earth that we put our hope into will fail us.  We put our hope in tomorrow, in other people, on a bet or a lottery ticket.  We hope the weather will be sunny for a wedding.  We hope we will have enough money to make it through the month.  We hope that we won’t get the flu.  We hope that people will make the right choices.  We throw the word “hope” around carelessly.  It fails us.
 
It fails us because we are putting hope in this world.  Our one true hope is God.  He is only one we can count on and the only one who will never fail us.  I realized that it is useless to put my hope in an imperfect world and its imperfect parts when I can put my hope in the perfect One who will never let me down.  Yes, he will never let me or you down – all we need to do is put our hope in him.
 
In Matthew 12:21 we are told this about Jesus: “And his name will be the hope of all the world.”  So even though we may be surrounded by defeat, by sadness, by fear, by adversity, by sickness, by loneliness – we always have the blessing of hope from God that will lift us up and take us through this world triumphantly.  And this glory, this victory is ours when we chose to put our belief in God. 

Back to samples