Hope is a Thing...

      The world is in a deep sleep. Covered in a thick blanket of powdery white, the ground, the trees, the plants, await spring. On a day like today, Spring seems very far off.  Everything is dead. Nothing is green. In fact it seem down right impossible that in just a few short weeks, we will begin to spot the little shoots of crocuses popping up through the hard soil...bringing with it the hope of warmer weather. This ebb and flow of the seasonal promise of new life displays the very nature of a loving Creator that made us to crave the freshness of things to come. He has constructed within our spirit the need to hope. Hope in life beyond what we can see today. Hope in a real and loving God. Hope that one day we will live in the unveiled presence of Him, able to see Him and know Him in completeness.
     I am very thankful today for this kind of hope that goes beyond my current circumstances. It is very easy to get caught up in the day's activities, my own thoughts and emotions, or what is presently happening in my life. I get so deceived by the lies that I perceive to not only be my current understanding, but also my destiny. This compounded with shame and fear, chips away at the truth of who God created me to be. Soon my heart is a desolate, barren wasteland that I would liken to the icy vastness of Antarctica.
    But, when I choose to believe,  to place my ultimate hope in Christ, I can begin to see the evidence of the life to come. Christ has promised me a hope for an eternity beyond this limited, frail life. I can look to Him as the Eternal Hope. This life is not all there is. He will complete His work in me.  I love how Hebrews 6:18 reads in the Message; "God can't break His word. And because His word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable. We who have run for our very lives to God have every reason to grab the promised hope with both hands and never let go." Verse 19 goes on to say, " It's an unbreakable spiritual lifeline, reaching past all appearances right to the very presence of God."
    I thank God with every fiber of my being right now for the lifeline of hope. Without His hope I think, no, I know, I would have been dead 10 times over! What do people do in life that refuse to accept the hope of Christ? Really, how do they manage to go on? I praise God for the Hope of Glory.
    In the past few years God has continually been speaking the word Hope to me. I have suffered for years with anxiety and depression, particularly after the birth of my kids. I have done medications and lots of prayer. I tend not to tell others about it because it is something that I often feel embarrassment over, like somehow I have failed at keeping control over my own life. But, as God worked in me the concept of having complete hope in Him, I realized that this would be a life long lesson for me to work through. God gave me a life verse that I nearly daily must repeat. Romans 15:13: "May the God of all hope give you joy and peace as you trust in Him. May you be fill with hope to over flowing by the power of the Holy Spirit." (NIV)
    I have had to come to the realization that I can't find hope on my own. The only way to have hope in Christ is to ask the Holy Spirit to give it to me. Hope can't come from our imperfect hearts. The Spirit of the Eternal God must perch it there. This reminds me of one of my favorite poems, by Emily Dickinson. Although it's probably not theologically accurate, I choose it end with it here.
  

Hope      Hope is the thing with feathers That perches in the soul, And sings the tune--without the words, And never stops at all, And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm. I've heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.