Hope Deferred

Hope is a strange little monkey. It's everything wonderful and possible yet undefinable and intangible. Hope is the motivating factor that gives so many the courage to put their feet on the floor every day while the absence of it causes others to languish. Hope is a feeling, a destination, an aspiration and a dream. When withheld or denied hope can become the seed that grows into a root of bitterness. As Solomon wisely penned, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is the tree of life." Proverbs 13:12

It's hard to imagine a life without hope. Hope is why people get married, have children, go to school, invest time in thier friendships, trust in Jesus, take care of each other and take care of themselves. I believe that hope is the nebulous "IT" that is out there for many of us. We don't know what "IT" is, but we keep going, keep pushing, keep knocking and keep dreaming because sometime, somewhere, that hope we have at the very core of our being will be realized making it all worth while.

I remember reading in college about a Nazi war general forcing concentration camp prisoners to move piles of dirt from one side of the camp to the other.  Every day the prisoners would be given shovels, buckets and wheelbarrows and were instructed to move the pile back where the dirt had originally been.  Hour after hour, day after day, this meaningless exercise in futility would continue.  Shuttling dirt piles from one side of the camp to the other.  It is said that prisoners who were given this meaningless and pointless task died sooner---their life held no purpose and without purpose they grew ill and died.  What a powerful illustration! It is not enough to simply live---people need a reason to. 

This begs the question, "Where do you find your hope?"
If you are a regular reader of my blogs, I hope you know what my answer is.  I "rejoice in hope of the glory of God." (Romans 5:2)  For me, my "IT" is Jesus, and knowing that HE is a hope that "never disappoints" (Romans 5:5a).  Make no mistake my friend, sometimes I get distracted from His hope.  More often than I care to admit, I start looking at my life and my circumstances and what I expect my life to look like and I find that my "hope factor" is seriously lagging.  When I start looking at me, I am doing the present-day equivalent of "shuttling dirt".  Looking at myself blurs my vision of God's heavenly purpose for my life and I find myself treading the very worn paths back and forth from meaningless task to meaningless task. 

Honestly, I have every earthly reason to doubt.  Life is hard for me right now, but because of God, I know it won't always be so.  I have a sincere and rock solid conviction that God is going to turn my mourning into dancing...and that is a dance worth waiting, and hoping for.