Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Why Hope Never Runs Dry.

Last night, I lay in my bed thinking, heart racing about the next day. It had been two months since I last went to work this year because I had been debilitated for that amount of time. I was anxious. I was breathing fast. I could not think straight. My joints were hurting a bit. I was really nervous about my first day of work this year.

Many years ago, while I was still in primary, I had similar days. There were those days when one was enjoying the holiday but had to finally quit slacking and get to school but then there were those days when again after suffering the debilitation, I would shudder at going back to school.

Good ole days

I would imagine how much they'd left me behind; what new conversation was going on that I was not aware of; were there mean new teachers? Was I going back during a test period? Would I do enough to be promoted to the next class?

Yes, the same way my heart raced in those days was the same way it raced yesterday. How much work will I find? Does my desk still exist? Will there be power? etc etc

I lay in bed without clear answers and could not stop this heart from racing! However, years ago considering the hurdles one would face, I wonder how I managed to continue going back to school (okay, parental guidance played a good part).

 Nonetheless I discovered that surrounded with an atmosphere of hope, one cannot help oneself but press on. It is about patient confidence that a time is at hand when what we hate will be gone and what we love will be eternal. It is about looking beyond the present conditions like pain, lack, rejection, failure to a place of contentment. It is the unseen bridge between where we are and where we want to be.

Without hope, a man is as good as dead. For hope presents an oxygen mask, a reason to endure the season, a light in a blanket of darkness. When a man sees no tomorrow, he has come to the end of life.

Interestingly though, hope can run dry. When one is a subject of recurring failure, pain, lack and sickness, it is possible to get to a place of doubt, sometimes frustration, many times anger, and most times depression and then make one give up the possibility of ever getting to the place they so much desire. This can happen especially when one's object is in themselves or the conditions prevailing or anticipated.

Hope placed upon changing things is risky for it might be exhausted. However when this  hope is placed upon an object that is unchangeable, unchanging then one can be sure and hope. 


 In this way desiring to declare more fully to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, God interposed by an oath,  so that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, 
which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil, where the Forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Heb 6:17-20 

With our hope in the eternal, the unchanging, the foundation : Jesus Christ, we have reason to wake up each day regardless of the pain, uncertainty, lack, disappointment and press on because we know our hope does not stop at the physical but extends into the unseen and the eternal. 

 And everyone who has this hope on him purifies himself, even as that One is pure. 1Jn3:3 

Why does hope never run dry? Jesus Christ. So then we wake up each day and look upon the day with a smile confident that our hope is sure and steady and that even if today we do not see deliverance, we shall see it inevitably, either in this life or in the eternal. 

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