This is a bit long, but I wanted to share it with you guys. Just found it a couple of days ago. I wrote this several years ago, after being betrayed by a friend and roommate and in subsequent danger of homelessness. It is entitled: Hope Hope. It is a word with which many of us are unfamiliar; a word that many of us don’t fully understand. Hope. What is it to hope? What does it mean to hope in the Lord? What does God mean when he says we have the hope of salvation, the hope of the resurrection? Does it mean we are simply to think of salvation, to see it, just as some nice thing we would like to have someday? Does Hope, the hope God speaks of, simply mean wishful thinking? That we are supposed to view Heaven, salvation, God’s love and care like some people view their chances of winning the lottery or even just a simple card game? That God might get us through this trial...or He might not? That when I die I might go to Heaven; I might not? That what happens to us in this life, and in the life to come, is simply the luck of the draw? “No!”, I say. “No!”, God cries. The Hope of God is not luck, it is not chance, it is not the uncaring, cold will of fate. The hope God speaks of is a hope that is sure. It is a hope that trusts. It is a hope that perseveres. It is a hope that endures. To hope in God is to believe, truly and from the heart, the promises that He made will come to pass. To hope in God, to hope for heaven, and eternal life, and salvation is to believe that God will keep His promises. That we live our lives based upon the surety, the irrefutable fact, the undeniable truth that God has, and does, and will always keep His promises. Hope is not a drowning man clinging to a piece of wood wishing for life, but believing he will die. Hope is not a father, laid-off from his job wishing, yearning that somehow, someway he will be able to provide for his family, but believing and living like he never will. Hope is not the cripple, to whom God promises healing, who says she believes God but prepares for a life of handicapped living. Hope, God’s Hope, True Hope, is not these vain things. Hope is not lives built on doubt and lies, rather Hope is a life built on promise, upon faith. The Hopeful man does not have ‘backup plans’. He does not ‘hedge his bets’ nor lives ‘luke-warm’. He places all he has, all he is in God’s hands, knowing that there, and only there, lies his salvation. Hope is the man who finds a great treasure in a field, then sells all he has to buy that field. Hope is the woman who finds a pearl of great value, then sells all she has so that she may obtain it. Hope is the old grandmother who prays for her worldly grandchildren every night, trusting with all her might that God will save them, will convert them. Hope is the man, who upon losing his job doesn’t go into ‘survival-mode’, but rather continues to love God, and to search for a job believing that the Lord will provide. Hope is the girl who is abused by her father, ignored by her mother, raped by her boyfriend, finds out she’s pregnant, and still seeks to love God, to live justly, to forgive her enemies, and to offer God the broken pieces of her heart so that He might mend it, making it larger, stronger, and mightier than ever before. Hope stands back up when it is struck down! ‘The righteous man may fall seven times, but he shall rise again’! Hope looks to the promise of tomorrow when today is dark and cold. Hope carries on when life looks bleak and hopeless. Hope does what is right, even though it may mean suffering will be the consequence. As a man brings an umbrella to work when the weatherman promises rain, so too does the hope-filled man order his life and decisions based upon what God has promised him. When despair tells you to end it, to give up on life, Hope cries out, “This too shall pass, look to eternity. How small this sorrow is when compared with an eternity of bliss.” When despair screams out, “There is only this present pain, there is only today. Pain and sorrow will always be with you!” Hope cries out louder, “Carry on! In Heaven God will dry your tears, and fill your heart with Love and Peace and Joy that never ends or fades! Carry on!” Hope looks to the promise of tomorrow. Hope looks to eternity. Hope believes God’s promises. Hope tells you to carry on, to rise up, then Hope comes up beside you, picks you up, and helps you carry on. So when everything and everyone tells you to give up, to embrace sin and death, that you’ll never be perfect, that you’ll never be free from sin, that death and pain is the worst thing ever, that we won’t be around forever so let’s live life to the fullest, drinking in all it’s pleasures, to forsake God and eternal life for numbness of soul and slaking our passing, enslaving fleshly desires; remember this: God will keep His promises. He is not a man that He should lie. He is God, and by His very nature He must deliver. For He is the Promise-Keeper, and He always comes through. God will always get you through, even if it’s not the way you expected. God will turn your pain into peace, your sorrow into laughter, your despair into new life, and your tears of woe into tears of joy. ‘For I have never known the just to be forsaken, nor the righteous to be abandoned by God,’ says the Psalmist. Carry On by Robert W. Service It is easy to fight when everything is right, And you are mad with the thrill and the glory; It is easy to cheer when victory is near, and wallow in fields of glory. It is a different song when everything is wrong. When you are feeling eternally mortal; When it’s ten against one, and hope there is none, Buck up little soldier and chortal Carry On! Carry On! There isn’t much punch in your blow. You’re glaring and staring and hitting out blind. You’re muddy and bloody, but never you mind. Carry On! Carry On! You haven’t a ghost of a show. It looks like death, but while you have a breath. Carry on, my son, Carry On! And so in the strife of the battle of life It is easy to fight when one is winning; It’s easy to slave, and starve and be brave, When the dawn of success is beginning. But the man who can meet despair and defeat With a cheer, there is the man of God’s own choosing The man who can fight to Heaven’s own height Is the man who can fight when he is losing. Carry On! Carry On! Things were never looming so black. But show that you haven’t a cowardly streak, And though you’re unlucky you never are weak. Carry On! Carry On! Brace up for another attack. It’s looking like hell – but you never can tell; Carry On, old man! Carry On! There are some who drift out in the desert of doubt, And some who in brutishness wallow; There are others, I know, who in piety go Because of a heaven to follow. But to labor with zest, and give it your best, For the sweetness and joy of the giving; To help folks along with a hand and a song; Why, there’s the sunshine of living. Carry On! Carry On! Fight the good fight and true; Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer; There‘s big work to do,and that’s while you are here Carry On! Carry On! Let the world be the better for you And at last when you die, let this be your cry: Carry On, my soul! Carry On!
Posted on: Thu, 21 Aug 2014 13:57:48 +0000
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