Hope

Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them. - Vincent McNabb

Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark. - George Iles

Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier. - Author Unknown

Martin Luther King, Jr. - We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.

Martin Luther King, jr.
If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. - Vaclav Havel

True hope dwells on the possible, even when life seems to be a plot written by someone who wants to see how much adversity we can overcome. True hope responds to the real world, to real life; it is an active effort - Walter Anderson

Now i'm going to copy from my friends post from yesterday that touched a very deep part of my heart. She was talking to a friend of her's about a seminar about "Fear". This is what was shared...

"Most of the time, God drags us to the 11th hour - to that state of complete hopelessness. helplessness. That place we hate being. Finally accepting of our utter futility in our humanity. He waits for that moment, when we come to the absolute end of ourselves...and then He performs the miracle.

But some of the time...He doesn't. We meet horror in real life -- when up to that point, it was only materialized as fear and anxiety in our hearts. the what-if comes true. We find ourselves in the 12th hour. Whatever hidden nightmare of an idea that was festering in your heart -- is suddenly reality. is God less loving? is God less sovereign? Satan so powerfully pushes the lies into our hearts....but she concluded that there should be, even in the 12th hour, a realization that though we experience a death -- in any form; the physical loss of life, loss of dreams, loss of security, loss of whatever -- we are never forsaken. He has promised a 13th hour. if we can pry our hands off of all this world and our fallen state offers, though the clock can strike 12 at any time, hour 13 is waiting. unshakable. a covenant to us.

Jesus himself was forsaken....so that i never would be.

Psalms 22:King David (prophetically) speaks on behalf of Israel:"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me,from the words of my groanings?O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer,and by night, but I find no rest...Yet, You are Holy,enthroned on the praises of Israel. In You our fathers trusted;they trusted, and You delivered them..." i don't know when deliverance comes.but is my desperation for temporary deliverance eclipsing the very notion that, in fact, i am already delivered?

though David was utterly undone by his circumstances, he recognized he would be delivered.in this life...or the next.
he feels forsaken. check.
he feels isolated. check.
he feels he can't cry anymore. check.
he's unable to rest. check.

Yet, You are Holy. as if to conclude it all...as if it were meant to be a lasting impression...as if to say, 'if you hear nothing else,' Jesus' final expression of love to the witnesses during his ascent:"...and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age...."as i meditate on all i can, while grappling with the very idea of fallen humanity, broken bodies, broken hearts, broken dreams, broken lives --His TRUTH is absolute, capable of arresting and interrupting every scheme by the prince of darkness to torment my mind....always, even to the end..."

Thank you Allison

If we lose hope we lose everything...