Daring to Hope

I started to write this as a response to a comment from Alan Knox, but it got too long, so now it’s a post...

It is a funny thing that we tend to have hope for others, but find it so hard to have hope for ourselves. I guess because to hope means risking having those hopes dashed. I must admit, often I try NOT to hope, for fear of disappointment (the glass-half-empty part of my personality, I guess.) And while it seems so easy for me to have faith and hope regarding my eternity, why is it hard for me to sometimes have faith and hope about the little stuff here on earth?

I am continually trying to learn from this experience- after all, it was so painful, I wouldn’t want the whole experience to be a waste. And I have learned a lot, about myself, about human nature, about the kind of person I want to be and don’t want to be. It has been a reminder- again- that God doesn’t go away, even when it feels like He has. That you can always find something good in the bad, if you are willing to relinquish your pain for just a moment. And that there is always reason to hope, as long as we hold onto faith that God is indeed in control, and that He really does care about what we care about. That kind of faith means letting go of our own need and desire for justice to look the way we want it to look and arrive when we want it to arrive. Sometimes, I just have to remind myself to “put my money where my mouth is”- I can talk all I want about faith, but then I just have to do it. Put it on the line, walk in it. Model it for others. Faith is actually more a verb than a noun, I think.