Hope
As a child, around age 10, I asked my parents for a drum set for Christmas. My younger brother Scott asked for a guitar. That Christmas morning, we came out of our rooms, and there was a drum set designated to Scott and a guitar designated to me. You can imagine the sinking in my heart when it happened. To a ten-year-old boy, that’s like the end of the world. My hope had been deferred, and my heart was sick. My parents somehow got it wrong. It eventually got worked out, and I got the drums. But my hope had been dashed to pieces for a time, and my heart was sick.
Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.
At eleven, after years of my mom enduring emotional and sometimes physical abuse from my dad, she finally decided she could do it no longer. She told him she was divorcing him and taking all five boys with her. He locked himself in a room where the guns were in a wall rack and used one of them to take his life. As an eleven-year-old boy, I had strong hope in my dad, and that moment rocked my world like a nuclear explosion. My hope had been deferred, and my heart was sick.
At sixty years of age, I have experienced many broken relationships. Some were very close and very dear. I’ve endured betrayals, difficult losses, and things not turning out as expected. It can jade you if you let it. It can hurl you into a lifestyle of self-protection that holds God at arm’s length.
Your trust can suffer a blow when your hope is deferred, and the pain of hope deferred can turn to withdrawal and an over-cautious nature if these events are not given the proper perspective and handed over to the One who has the shoulders to carry them.
The solution is not someone else getting it together enough for me to have hope!
I need to change where I am looking for hope!
I have to allow the Holy Spirit to help me trust again! I have to let Him point me to where the real solution is.
I don’t want to depend on a thin thread of hope in others to carry me in times of trouble; I want to hang onto the chain of hope attached to Jesus, Who is the anchor of hope and promise for my soul!
Hebrews 6:19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil,
We have a High Priest who has entered the real Holy of Holies in heaven, sprinkled His own blood on the mercy seat, and forever lives to intercede on our behalf. It is wise to put our hope in Him instead of how things seem to be going in the moment or what level or kind of attention I may or may not get from someone I have deemed significant. Jesus is always a sure hope and wants to be the anchor of our soul. I encourage you to put your hope in Him.
