Re-defining Hope

A couple weeks ago I wrote about re-defining goodness, perhaps there’s a series of posts inside this “redefining” theme – or not. There’s at least this one.

"Hope," it meant something different to me as a kid than it does now.

You see, now I bank all I am on a hope. Then I would’ve hoped to go to Disney World, or whatever.

We hope for eating Oreo’s for dessert and having a good day. We hope for finding the one we love and marrying them. We hope for children who grow healthy and strong. We hope to see a good movie. Does that demonstrate the diversity of the word? Hope. (I’m not a big political guy, but I do know Obama used hope as a campaign slogan in 2008.)

Yet if we redefine it then it ought to be understood something like this, hope: an earnest expectation.

There’s a reason the symbol for hope is an anchor. Because our hope is the foundation of faith (perhaps), it will not be put to shame. It is the earnest expectation that God will do what he has promised to do and save our souls. It’s knowledge of the factual reality that God will make all things new. It’s the feeling persuasion of spiritual things. It’s what we bet all of life and all of love and all of all against that God will be God and we will be men and this is for our good.

My anchor holds within the veil.

So hope isn’t just a want or desire for something to happen or change – no – it’s an expectation that it will change and it will happen. And the expectation is of such a fervently firm nature that we are willing to plan the rest of today (cause that’s all we’re semi-sure of) and dare to plan 80 years of life upon.

My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

Them There Thoughts

1) The goodness of God draws us to repentance. I think our definition of 'good' is too small, too shallow, too flimsy.

2) Enrolled in grad-school. Classes start in 2 weeks. WSU didn't waste one minute in telling me I was accepted. Not one.

3) While enrolling I was sent to four different locations before 1) being sent to the right place and 2) being told the person I needed to see wasn't there.

4) Made fried chicken the other night, like my momma makes it! The gravy sucked, but the fried chicken was good!

5) Stared at the stars a few times this week.

6) The Head and The Heart

7) Vacation next week!

8) When your fears a dismissed one by one.

9) Almost had a major slip of the tongue while preaching... I blushed at the thought. Still.

10) Going to start calling my tattoo a freckle.

11) Here's a quote for you: "... When once the soul is fixed on that supreme and all-sufficient good, it finds so much perfection and goodness as doth not only answer and satisfy its affection, but master and overpower it too: it finds all its love to be too faint and languid for such a noble object, and is only sorry that it can command no more. It wisheth for the flames of a seraph, and longs for the time when it shall be wholly melted and dissolved into love: and because it can do so little itslef, it desires the assistance of the whole creation, that angels and men would concur with it in the admiration and love of those infinite perfections." Henry Scougal

Laugh

Stars

Last night, after my last meeting and before a phone call, I sat on the porch and watched the clouds unveil the stars - all full of questions about time and such, but still thankful for the present, yet longing for the future. Do you know what I mean?

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in what might be or what will be, so caught up that we miss the present.

Yet in some capacity this is a good thing – to be eternally minded people, so caught up in what’s to come that we are consistently aiming at seeing other people see the future we see.

In the end How Great Thou Art started playing in my head.

“O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder,

Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made;

I see the stars; I hear the rolling thunder,

Thy power throughout the universe displayed.

Then sings my soul, My Savior God, to Thee,

How great Thou art, how great Thou art.”

My wonders weren’t answered, the future is still unknown, but beautifully so. Even still it’s God’s goodness, which leads me to repentance, and he is good. So until the future has become the past I must, I will, I need to trust He will be faithful to himself and that’s precisely what I (we) need.