Someone recently asked me about my definition of hope. I remember when I was first thinking about what to call this ministry, “Broken and Hopeful” came to mind instantly and my next thought was—well, that’s a stupid name. Ha! But I couldn’t get away from the name, and I believe it’s what God had for me to call it.
Hope has always been a big deal in my life. To me, hope, is the expectation of light in darkness, of relief in pain, of beauty in crass ugliness. It is sometimes defiant, sometimes silly and sometimes false. There are days when our hope is in the wrong thing and we end up being disappointed. So then, we are tempted to abandon hope and live in cynicism.
But hope that doesn’t disappoint is that found in Jesus. He is the light in the darkness, the relief in pain and the beauty in a hard, ugly world. His Life burns bright as the Way ahead, even when we have no idea where we are going.
I have always found the story of Moses and the serpent rod healing very interesting in Numbers 21. All the people had to do was look at the serpent rod and they would be healed from the bites of the snakes released in their midst because of disobedience. They didn’t have to perform a crazy task, or cut off their legs. Just look. And Naaman had to go jump in the water of the Jordan in 2 Kings 5. Again, not a terrible request other than how it would make him dive into humility at the same time. But these people had to have hope or they never would have looked or jumped.
Sometimes in our circumstance, we lose hope. We don’t see the possibility of a way ahead or of Life coming from death. I think in those moments it is important to remember the way of God all through the Bible and into today. He takes the broken, used, torn and messed up people that we are and brings beauty, life and freedom in and through us. The hope isn’t found in how good we can be or how we’ve kept the rules. That’s legalism, not hope, and it will fail you. Hope is found in the beautiful simplicity of a relationship with our Shepherd who brings peace that makes no sense considering the situation in which we might find ourselves.
In a lot of ways, I’m really grateful that hope doesn’t appear in a place that seems logical to find it. It means that even on the bleakest days when I feel I’ve done it all wrong, He brings the hope that reminds me tomorrow is a new day and I haven’t lost Him. Jesus didn’t just give His Life once on the cross (which is not minimized in any way as that was the only way any of this works!) but also continues to give His Life each day to us to be able to walk in hope and to love others and to find freedom from idols. He brings hope to our daily hell.
Living within you is the Christ who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for his people, and God wants everyone to know it! Colossians 1:27