Hope Killers

Hope killers.  They are deadly.  The Enemy of our souls knows this.  We fight them every day. These killers of our hope can take on many different forms. Some of them may look like this: 

The news you want to hear that never comes…  the same mundane 24 hours over and over again…  the person you admire and look up to lets you down again… the word that is never kept or that is forgotten…  when God does not seem to be speaking… loneliness.

                There was a time in my life when I was extremely anemic.  I had lost over 30% of my blood volume due to complications from a miscarriage.  I downed iron pills like I have been eating cough drops lately.  There seemed to be no end to the weariness in both body and soul.  Day after day was the same.  But God…

                I love that phrase, “but God.”  It makes me think of terrifying rescues, a husband loving a wife even unto death, a mother giving herself for her child without a moment’s hesitation.  “But God”, is the ultimate hope restorer.  No matter what, when God breaks through and reaches in, time stands still and all other forces are thwarted.

                You see, God waits until all else has failed.  When we have put all of our hope in the proverbial “egg basket” of other idols, He waits.  He waits until the eggs have all broken or have failed to hatch.  When everything else turns up empty, he comes and breathes hope back into our souls with a word or a reminder or a look or a hug.  He knows what we need.  Him+nothing = all that I need. 

                All else had turned up empty for me.  The doctor’s predictions had not panned out.   The bleeding continued… for too long.  But God had been waiting.  He waited until I could take it no longer, until I cried out to Him and said, “Make this stop!”   And, He did.  The next day, it all stopped.  God had moved.  He keeps hope alive.  Oh, and by the way, He never fails.                                    ~Your Fellow Sojourner

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.

His oath, His covenant, His blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my hope and stay.

When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh, may I then in Him be found;
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.

Refrain: 
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.