Perhaps today your hope is small, fading, almost gone. You’ve tried to keep it alive, but the misadventures of life have intervened. Things that promised to help didn’t. Things that seemed to be the answer weren’t.
The Bible knows how you feel. It really does. It says it this way, My soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is (Lamentations 3:17). You’re ready to say, My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord (Lamentations 3:18).
These feelings of despair and hopelessness come to many of us at times. Outwardly we try to be cheerful, but inside things are pretty raw. We find our grip on life failing and sliding ever lower.
It is at times exactly like this — when we embrace true hope from that hopeless place — that it becomes most deeply real. With nothing on earth left to hope for, we say, “The Lord is my portion. Therefore I will hope in Him.”
All this world’s hopes ultimately fade. Even the best of them you cannot save. But if the Lord is your portion — not the Lord and something else, just the Lord — you can have real hope again. He is the full and rich portion, the only hope that reaches beyond this world’s disappointments. You can say, “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).
Lord, I hope in you alone and in you only. I thank you for your mercy today in sending Jesus for me. If nothing else in this world is true, that alone is enough to buoy my hope forever. Amen.
Go Deeper — Consider how your hope is tied to things that may happen. That is good. But let your true hope be tied to Jesus Christ. You will have an anchor that will never slip.
Photo Credit: Rob Bye