When I am afraid, I put my trust in You. Psalm 56:3
“Hope requires a sense of purpose and dignity—a belief that we matter and that our life has value. But in a world of chaos, this hope cannot come from our circumstances. Our ability to control and maintain circumstances is just too feeble. We cannot contain the unpredictable forces of this world, and putting our hope in a career, a family, a nation, or even our own moral righteousness is flirting with disaster. When they fail, and they eventually will, so will our hope. Our sense of worth and dignity gets washed away in a deluge of despair.”
Skye Jethani in With from chapter “Life with Hope” (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011) 135-156.
Americans love to try to “control and maintain our circumstances.” The preservation of comfort is a high value. With COVID we realize that we are not in control and our ability to maintain our circumstances is gone. There’s only one place to go to avoid despair. Find hope in God.
Where is your hope today? How about those around you?
Many put their hope in a high-paying job. It can be gone in a moment. Others hope in a nation. As America moves toward election season many are promising things only God can deliver. The lesson is not to put our hope in our circumstances.
So our sense of worth comes from the fact that we are loved by God. You are loved by God. From there, hope is not in our moral goodness, because all of us are sinners. Our hope rests in God’s goodness, His generosity. And He wants us to be generous.
We get to dispense His good gifts, and in these hard times, let’s share hope richly.