By Geoffrey Spencer
Beloved children of the Restoration, your continuing faith adventure with God has been divinely-led, eventful, challenging, and sometimes surprising to you. By the grace of God, you are poised to fulfill God’s ultimate vision for the church.
“A Brightness of Hope,” Choose Hope: Adult Study Guide, Herald House, p. 25, excerpted
The language of hope is so casually applied to a range of attitudes having little actual relationship to hope that it will help to focus the target further. First, to speak of hope is not to imply personal accommodation. It may be natural to want the future to solve our problems, remove our burdens, turn our failures into success, guarantee long life free from accident or disease, provide job satisfaction, and in other ways arrange the future to our personal preferences. But this natural inclination should not be confused with hope. This principle may be more readily validated in hindsight.
How many of us, looking back over our lives, can recognize that from time to time we had certain expectations or ambitions that did not eventuate? Rather, we experienced a different outcome, which we can now see as having been a wiser course and a distinct blessing to us. On occasion this might appear to have been mere chance, but I believe that more frequently we will come to the conclusion that the spirit of hope transcended the pull of personal accommodation or ambition.
Second, hope in God is not to be confused with hope in continued prosperity. Some years ago the American labor leader Samuel Gompers was asked by a newspaper reporter what the American worker wanted. Gompers replied in a single word: “More.” Of course, American workers are no different in this respect from the great majority of human beings.
We tend to think automatically of the future in terms of more, even though it may be apparent that more for us means less for others. But those who live in hope are prepared to confess that the future, if it is to herald justice and equity for those who have been exploited and deprived, may indeed mean less. Their hope in God is not contingent on increased prosperity, or even on stable conditions; they are simply committed to God’s future, whatever surprise, discomfort, or upheaval in the settled order may be involved.
Prayer Phrase
“Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer” (Romans 12:12).
Deepening Roots
A tree with superficial roots will wither during drought, or severe storms may uproot it. A tree whose roots go deep is stable and draws from deep waters. Imagine yourself as a tree by a river or stream. Sense your roots extending deep into the earth in search of God’s Spirit. Reflect or pray about what you hope to find as your spirit searches for deeper identity in God.
Today’s Prayer for Peace
Engage in a daily practice of praying for peace in our world. Click here to read today’s prayer and be part of this practice of peace.