DAY 4: What is God giving you hope for?

‘Hope’ is an odd word in the English language. When we use it in sentences such as ‘I hope it’ll be sunny tomorrow’, or ‘I hope that the exam goes well for you’, there’s always an element of uncertainty. When we read of hope in the Bible, though, it’s quite different. Hope is tied to God’s promises and his character. In the letters of the early church in the New Testament, Christians hoped for the new creation to come: the great promise of the ultimate restoration of the relationships between God, humanity and creation. Hope like this is of a very different kind from the hope we usually talk about.

But there’s a tension at the heart of hope. We have an eternal hope for restoration and renewal, but sometimes God also gives us specific hope for particular instances of renewal in our time.

In fact, I think that we often need this. Without it we wouldn’t start working on many of the injustices we see today; they just look too big, too intractable, just as I imagine the struggle against apartheid, or for free education, or for women to have the vote, looked decades ago to those who faced those issues.

Scripture: Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)

11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.

Reading and reflection question:

Faith is the substance of things hoped for. To paraphrase Rubem Alves, the Brazilian theologian: ‘Hope is hearing the melody of the future. Faith is having the courage to dance to it now.’ So… what does God’s future sound like to you?