Hope deferred makes the heart sick...
Proverbs 13:12
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure...
Hebrews 6:19
For awhile it looked like this week would be a Monday Afternoon Tea... it has been a week when ponderings had to be accomplished in the midst of busy-ness and sinus misery. ;)
These past days, I have been pondering about hope in general and the hope of Spring specifically... for obvious reasons. My thoughts are on flowers and green grass and blooming dogwood trees and the sound of chirping birds outside my window each morning and red umbrellas on deck tables and the planting of seeds and seedlings... and warmth... hope.
As I have shown before, I have had the Scrabble titles H O P E spelled out on top of my white vintage style bread box for a couple of years now. It was my Word of the Year for a few years. Hope meant much to me as it continues to do. I love all the images the word brings to my mind, even as I read it... HOPE.
It happened that I was listening to a Bible teacher on Saturday who casually mentioned you don't hear much about hope, anymore. That one statement started my thoughts down a rabbit trail... much like Alice's falling into Wonderland... and I realized the truth of that statement.
In many churches and entire denominations these days, hope is the poor and weak stepsister of mighty masculine faith. We are made to feel weakness if we say we have hope... as if faith and hope cannot cohabit in the same soul... much less the same prayer request.
Yes, it is true that faith is essential to our faith and our walk with God. The book of Hebrews tells us it is impossible to please God without faith. Faith is a power verb, that force which causes us to dig deep in the trenches of our spiritual life and hunker down as we read the Word and Seek God's Will and believe in answered prayer... when the answers are yet unseen.
But that does not make hope of no importance or weak... no, it is that feminine feeling that hope offers which makes me feel all warm and cozy. Faith draws the sword and fights the battles. Hope pours the tea and serves the chicken soup and lights the candles and keeps the home fires burning. Faith gets all sweaty and flexes his muscles as he conquers the enemy with the Word. Hope is the knitted throw around the shoulders which brings warmth as the cold winds of a trial whips through my days.
I won't go down that road any longer, the one the Bible teacher mentioned as in an afterthought. Hope will take its' place of honor alongside faith in my moments and hours and days and years on this, The Silent Planet*.
Together they will shed a light in the darkness until the day the journey is complete... and as the old men of the cloth would say... now, that will preach. Forever and ever, amen. :)
*The name by which Earth is known in the Lewis Space Trilogy.
0 Yorumlar