Hope is hard.
I happen to be in a season where it is hard to feel it, hard to hang on to it, and harder still to believe it can create any kind of change.
I have just experienced a season of loss. From a loss of sleep brought about by a newborn baby, to a loss of income, to the loss of a dear friend to cancer, it has been a time of many tears.
Hope feels fleeting…
Perhaps, that is because it is so easy to misunderstand what hope truly is.
Peter tells us to, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15).
I hope for a better sales season in the coming year. I hope for my daughter to sleep through the night. I hope none that I love are diagnosed with cancer, and those that are become miraculously healed.
But this kind of hope fails. Not all of these things will come true for me this year. If I believe hope only means praying for the best outcome, it will always slip through my fingertips.
The hope Peter is talking about is the kind that says all can go horribly wrong, but all is never lost. Loved ones will die. Jobs will be taken. And God bless us, babies will never want to sleep when you need them to.
But real hope says one day God will make it RIGHT. In the meantime, He won’t waste a single hurt. He will use all of it.
He can do this because real hope is a baby lane down in a manger. Hope is a man who created fishers of men. Hope is a God who died on the cross, only to rise again.
Hope is simple.
It is believe that God is still good even when…even if…even now.
— Heather Klein, Connection and Formation Coordinator
