i.
Ah, hope.
Lately, I’ve been mulling over the puzzling question of what real hope looks like, in a world as messed up as ours is.
I’ve been thinking, praying, talking, and tweeting about it, and I’ve been doing my best to grasp the essence of what it truly is…and what it can look like individually in our lives.
Hope is beautiful, because it is the promise of faith. Not blind faith, but real, grounded, and radical faith in a world of chaos; confusion; hopelessness.
Hope is a form of anticipation, of something guaranteed, not just wished for, and I’ve been grappling with this too, recently.
Where is hope when we can’t see straight? Where is hope in depression, in heartache, in desperation?
Where is hope when the money is tight, when pain is ever-present, when the future seems miserably bleak?
Where is hope in hospitals, in nursing homes, at gravesides?
Where is hope in any of it? Where is hope at all?
What are we even hoping for?
I wish I could lie and say that it all gets better. It may, or it may not. But God is not any less good when He chooses not to give us everything we think we need on this earth. Our ultimate need is a spiritual one, one He took care of on the cross.
Scattered Journal Pages 