Jesus Revives Hope In Disappointed PeopleSample

Hope. We use the word every day. With the best intentions we cast pleasant desires for ourselves and our friends into the air to vanish. We mean well, but we have precious little control over outcomes. 

I hope it doesn’t rain, (but there are clouds rolling in.)

I hope you feel better, (but sympathy doesn’t chase away the virus.)

I hope I get to sleep in, (but I have young children.)

Our metaphors are also colored with unlikelihood. “Dashed hope” gives way to the announcement that the situation is “beyond hope.” Even when we speak positively, hope is a small glimmer, a singular ray, or a fine shred. 

It is a strange and sad irony that our well-wishes are thin and unreliable. In devastation and unmet expectations, we may mistakenly conclude that our hope in Christ is as slippery as the rain we were hoping not to get.

 

But hope is a pillar of our Christian faith. It is not the vaporous wish tainted by doubt that we employ as we blow out birthday candles. When the apostles wrote about it, they spoke with confident assurance. Peter tells us we have a “living hope.” The writer of Hebrews calls it an “anchor for the soul.” 

Biblical hope is expectant certainty. It is knowing that Christ guarantees everything he has promised and purchased.

When Paul prayed for the church in the city of Ephesus he said, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you.” That kind of hope is no evaporating well-wish. It is absolute--a hope that does not put us to shame. 

Throughout the gospels Jesus transformed disappointment into unexpected gifts. To read the stories is to be continually surprised by God’s drastic and surprising methods. His work was rarely what anyone anticipated, but it was always immeasurably more than any of them could have asked or imagined.

And because He doesn’t change, we can expect the unexpected and prepare to have our hope in him revived.

 

RESPOND: In what areas of your life are you praying for Jesus to revive hope?