Trusting to Hope

Mount of Blessing, Israel

From my series on trust, I find myself being led to the concept of hope. It has been a battle, though, as I try to reconcile that oft quoted verse in Romans 5:5 where it says that hope doesn’t disappoint.

I know the bible to be true and stand by its veracity, and its application to my life. That is the only thing standing in between me taking up a pair of scissors and redesigning that part of my precious scriptures. I’m sure tomes have been written on Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart-sick, but when longing is fulfilled, it is a tree of life.” But what happens when you seem to be stuck in the land of the deferment of hope?

As I pondered this, I sense the Lord pressing a bit on the issue. Laughing in the face of the Creator is not polite, but it was an instinctual reaction, and He’s still cleaning me up, in many ways. I realize that I can dodge the issue, which, to be honest, I have been for several months, but He has His own plans and purposes that rarely seem to match ours. So here I go, down this journey. And as I started to really focus, I realized that hope never seems to let its light flicker out. In another entry I wrote years ago, oddly enough, Trust to Hope, I commented about hope, “… the heart was fashioned to always hope – it always has to hope in something. And it has an amazing amnesia of what happened to hope the time before.”

Hmm. Hope – it is infinitely more than wishful thinking, but rather, a confident expectation. Hope remains, in some way, form, or fashion, always. 1 Corinthians 13:13: “Now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Hope is one of the three that remain, a light that refuses to be put out. And so begins this next adventure

I’ll stand before my Lord of Song

Most people know the hauntingly beautiful song “Hallelujah” written by Leonard Cohen. There have been many renditions, and many expositions of it including himself. He wrote various verses, and when he performed, he sang different sets of lyrics. But I digress. I keep coming back to the last verse:

I did my best, it wasn’t much

I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch

I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you

And even though it all went wrong

I’ll stand before the Lord of Song

With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

To me, that touches on a journey of trying, trials, disappointment, disaster, but confidence in the end that the Lord is worthy of praise. Even though the world is falling down around you, He is still trustworthy. Amen.

For your listening pleasure:

BYNA 40 Days – Day 10

Trust to Hope

Ramblings from my journal…
“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when desire comes, it is the tree of life.” Part of my wrestling is that I am hesitant to hope, having seen many hopes dashed time and time again. But I think the heart was fashioned to always hope – it has to always hope in something. And it has an amazing amnesia of what happened to hope the time before.

Yes, scary though it is, I will trust to hope.

“Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices; My flesh will also rest in hope.” – Psalm 16:9

Keep On

So, I’ve been hearing messages and reading little clips about how we should keep going, and not turning back. Very often it’s just past the very point when we give up that breakthrough could have happened, where the reward was waiting the whole time, and we just didn’t have the strength, stamina, perseverance, patience or whatever to keep on keeping on. It reminds me of a little adventure I had when I was in Scotland.

The Pillars of Sliver Knowles

I went to a little beach called Silver Knowles, and I immediately noticed an island not too far off from the shore, and a kind of  stone bridge looking structure that led to it, but the bridge looked broken down and falling apart. On the island, I saw a fort looking structure, so I decided I wanted to go out on the island. I began walking down the shore, hoping I could cross the bridge looking thing. As I was walking, I saw several really nice and peaceful places I could stop, sit and have a nice quiet time if I couldn’t get to the island, but I kept trekking along. It was a long ways away, but as I got closer, about 2/3 of the way there, I saw that what I thought was a bridge really wasn’t. They were these huge pillars, and  they weren’t connected. Really impressive, but a disappointment, since I couldn’t see any other way to get to the island. I figured, well, I’ll just get as close as I can and sit on the piece of land jutting out by that not-bridge.

I headed in that direction, more and more disappointed that I couldn’t get to the island. When I got to that little piece of land, I was very surprised to see that next to the huge pillars was a very low walkway, so low that you couldn’t see it from far away, even so low that when the tide comes in, it would cover it.

The walkway by the pillars

As I made my way across the walkway, I thought about how like our lives it is. We have a vision or dream or goal in mind, and as we work towards it, the path that we thought we were going to take ends up being blocked, going the wrong direction, fallen apart, whatever. We have a choice then to go as far as we can go, or turning back, or turning aside to other things that seem doable or not as impossible. But, if we keep on going as far as we know how, a way tends to open up that we never saw before, and would never have seen if we didn’t keep pushing forward.

I know that I can see life lessons in the smallest and silliest things, but that one hit me like a brick. As I sat on the island (it was like a little Eden), I thought about how the walkway was longer than it looked, and really slippery in places. It changed height and material about halfway out, and it was a little unnerving to feel like I was walking out in the middle of the ocean (which, on the way back, nearly happened – I nearly had to run to beat the tide!). But it was totally worth it. The island was amazing, and I learned a great lesson that I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon…