Thoughts on hope

But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love forever and ever. I will praise You forever for what you have done; in Your name I will hope, for Your name is good. I will praise You in the presence of Your saints

Psalm 52:8-9

Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain You, He will never let the righteous fall

Psalm 55:22

The Lord is my light and my salvation – whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life – of whom shall I be afraid?

Psalm 27:1

Without hope, there is nothing to live for, no reason for anything. Over the past months I have learned that to be without hope is to be without life. I struggled a lot with hope, or rather, feelings of hopelessness. If God is not our hope, then what do we hope in? I had my hope in so many other things and they failed me miserably. Life sucks, it gets hard, and if we don’t have a constant in our life, where do we go? I had a hard enough time over the past year struggling with anxiety and I have God. I cannot imagine going what I went through by myself.

Even if you believe in God and don’t have hope, what are you doing? And is it truly faith? I don’t mean the fluffy hopefulness that good things will happen to you and that everything will be okay. I mean in the middle of life, the hurt, the pain, and the hell of it all, you believe and have hope that God has a plan for you (and you ACT like it). I believe hope and faith are so intimately connected and I don’t know how you could have one without the other.

I’ve been struggling with hope recently. Not understanding the future, not knowing where God is taking me. Not knowing where God is taking Tim and I. Tim was laid off last week, exactly one week from today. Not long before he was laid off I was considering quitting my job. I didn’t want it in the first place. I was hesitant to take it and it proved to be a lot of work. Not that I am lazy, but that I am trying to reconcile having a life and having a job. But we cannot afford to have me quit now.

It’s interesting all the plans we have for ourselves, whether they appear godly or not. I wanted Tim to get a job that supported the both of us completely, and I could just work part time or develop my own business or pursue volunteering. Thinking about it it sounded biblical – men are the providers and women are the home builders. Yes, that is true, but I wonder how much of that is monetary.

I do believe that men should be the providers when it comes to finances, however I don’t think that it ends there or even finds it’s meaning there. Maybe men are to be the providers in more ways that just with money. Maybe they are the ones who should provide a safe place for the women (not just a house, but a relationship), a place of comfort and love and protection. How great is our God to create men and women the way that He did, and how even more great it is that we are merely small reflections of Himself.

God is our protection, our safeplace, our home. He is our refuge and our deliverer, and our ultimate provider. He is the husband to the widows and a father to the fatherless. He is our everything. He is our lover, our ‘home builder’, our tender care giver, and our nurturer.

Thank you God that you are bigger than me and my problems. Thank you that you bring healing and will absolutely never leave me, even when I try to leave you. Thank you that you draw me close to you even when I deserve punishment. Thank you that you love me even when I don’t know everything about you or understand how you work. Thank you that you are a delightful mystery that causes us to continually seek after you. And thank you that we can never figure you out. Thank you that you are real.

“I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelery and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the Lord. “Therefore, I am now going to allure her, I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the days she came out of Egypt. In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master’.”

Hosea 2:13-16