Hope raises men from the ashes and the lonely depths of missteps and defeat. Like a rope thrown out to a drifter overboard and under-lucked, pulled by waves in the direction of lost, hope is a way back. Hope is a voice calling amidst all that is perverse and befouled to a heart, mine, graffiti-ed with accusations against a Protector who did not defend me against all that opposed and did not answer when I called. Left to politely violent, disruptive little violators of sleep and sanity, untrustworthy and unrelenting, damnable lies picking at the little that did remain like vultures craving the death of the defenseless, wounded carnage that was once a life together, now broken dreams undone. That is how hope found me, shuffling around in the ashes of the life I once knew just the other day. It was a sure voice guiding me back to life and safety.
I think of hope as a continual rescuing, a safe harbor always open and just within distance.
Hope is the deep breath taken when life gets a little heavier than normal, whatever it is that normal exactly means now. Tomorrow and the life ahead is brighter, warmer and inviting because today, right in this moment when things do not always set easily and during those days inexplicably more difficult than others, hope has lifted me. I have drowned a thousand times in seas too stormy to survive. Each time, it is hope that has revived me when my grasp on life has loosened.
And what reason generates such a capable and certain hope?
He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
“Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
Psalm 91:1, 15-16, ESV
It is nothing and no other but He who provides such a surety of hope. God of the beginning and of the end is plenty capable to sustain all that happens and goes awry in the middle.
I am deeply thankful for the hope that He has implanted and continues to nourish within my heart and in each day no matter the condition and circumstance. Hope is a reality invading, overcoming and replacing all that seems forever foggy and dismal. It is God’s reality of redemption and goodness that no matter how far-fetched and good it can seem at times faithfully lifts me up.
For your contemplation and thinking on this Thanksgiving day...
Oh come, let us sing to the Lord;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the Lord is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Oh come, let us worship and bow down;
let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah,
as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
when your fathers put me to the test
and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
For forty years I loathed that generation
and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart,
and they have not known my ways.”
Therefore I swore in my wrath,
“They shall not enter my rest.”
Psalm 95, ESV
Noticed the time you posted this blog which reassures me of your dedication to your craft. like the chosen passage. when I awoke the morning I knew hope was in sight.