Carolyn Walker
"For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently." [NIV]
Mr. Webster defines HOPE as "desire with expectation of obtaining what is desired or belief that it is obtainable". As I read the Apostle Paul and Webster I realized that what both these men were telling us is to not be content with what we see for "now we see through a glass darkly"; but to look patiently for what is to come for a Christian. That hope is eternal life through Jesus Christ - not earthly possessions - for we are the children of God and in Him is our Hope. Despair as well as hope are ours on this earth, but we as Christians have more ahead.
When I opened the dictionary my father gave me many years ago as I started college, out fell a yellow newspaper article I had saved. It was written by one of my favorite writers, Lewis Grizzard, not one of his jovial, extremely funny articles, but a very different one - that's probably why I kept it. He told of traveling with the U.S. Friendship Force to the Soviet Union, then the U.S.S.R. Vilnius, Lithuania was a country where the government thought, "religion was an opiate for the weak and the ignorant". On a warm Sunday evening a group visited a small "underground" church packed with 300 worshippers.
He said, "You won't hear a more beautiful, joyous noise in the biggest and finest churches in the U.S. There was something familiar about this, and I put the connection together. Except for the language, this could have been the country church in Moreland, GA U.S.A. where my grandparents raised me. Their smiles and embraces said that we were bound by stronger ties than the government could ever understand."
What Mr. Grizzard experienced was HOPE, the kind that looks to "what we do not yet have". That night he remembered his grandfather's favorite hymn "Count Your Blessings"...name them one
by one I remember one of my father's favorites: "My hope is built on nothing less that Jesus' blood and righteousness; 1 dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus' name. On Christ, the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand."
Dear Father: in our times of weakness and despair as in our times of joy and love, may we always look to the day of HOPE when all God's promises will be fulfilled and cling to that HOPE as we patiently stand on the solid Rock. Amen,
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