WEEK 04 | HOPE

What is worth hoping for anymore?

So very much, it turns out.

This is the truth of the gospel:

Hope has come near.

Hope remains.

  

DAY 22 | SCENT OF HOPE

centering thought

“There is a ‘scent’ to your presence, and its fragrance has nothing to do with the body lotion or essential oils you may wear, the animals you may keep as pets at home, or your go-to spices while cooking.”

encouragement from God’s word 

Read: 2 CORINTHIANS 2:14-16

devotional direction

You’ve probably been there: You know you smell something, but you can’t sort out what it is. You stand there, your refrigerator door opened wide, eyeing every container of leftovers askance. Is it you, yesterday’s pork fried rice? you wonder. Or you, last week’s Bolognese? Maybe you’re the culprit, pimiento cheese. In that moment, it seems nothing is quite as important as identifying the cause of the stench and summarily dismissing it from your life. You simply can’t go on, with this wretched smell enveloping your world.

Your passion here would be warranted, of course, and yet there is a stench that ought to elicit more passion still: the smell of rampant hopelessness, the worst smell on planet Earth. Hopelessness smells like stagnancy, like forfeiture, like colossal loss. Hopelessness smells like abdication, like desperation, like visceral grief. When hope dies in a human soul, all other nobilities die as well, which is why we ought to seek out hopelessness with the same level of fervor we apply to spotting rancid left-overs in the fridge and throw hopelessness away at once. 

In Christ is hope, and as we dwell in his presence, we rise as a “sweet perfume” to the pleasure of our heavenly Father. In the same way that we might take in a blossoming lavender bush or homemade soup that has been simmering all day, God the Father cranes his neck outward, closes his eyes in anticipation, and invites the slow waft of scent to penetrate his senses. “Ahhh, there it is,” we can imagine his saying, “even in the midst of challenging circumstances, my children are holding fast to hope …”

question to ponder

Which of your attitudes, assumptions, postures, positions, habits, tendencies, or perspectives could use a little “deodorant,” so that they may be found pleasingly fragrant by God?