Day 3 & 4 of Hope

Wednesdays are difficult to post due to a busy schedule. However, I won't "skimp". 

Psalm 121: 1 & 2  - "I lift up my eyes to the mountains — where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth."  Many people read this as a verse thinking the author is appreciating creation and that the God of creation is where his hope comes from. Only the second part of the preceding statement is true.  If we know much about the context, there were many altars built to false gods in the mountains. While it is nice to think about the beauty of creation, we must understand that the author is telling us that his hope DOES NOT come from the "gods" represented in the mountainside shrines.

When looking for hope, we need to TRULY seek after God. Not that He is hard to find, rather we become so distracted looking for beauty (hope), we are not really seeking God or pursuing Him with ALL we have. So, where is my hope found? The obvious, and spiritual answer, is God. And where is God found? In our circumstances? In others? In The Body? Working through non-believers and pagan world systems? Sometimes. Yet sometimes, the difficult struggle can be found in the desire to see God tangibly - not just try to "tie Him" to some providential work. 

It is like the story of the little boy who lost his daddy. His mother, being keenly aware of the her son's profound sense of longing tried to encourage the boy by saying, "Remember, Jesus is a father to the fatherless. God is your daddy," to which the boy replied, "I know mommy, but sometimes I need God to have a body so I can throw the football with Him." Maybe we as believers lose hope because we need to see MORE of Jesus from each other - especially from other Believers that we respect. Like the little boy, is it really wrong to desire to see "God with a body"?

None-the-less, our hope comes from the Lord. I think the challenge for me is to be God with a body. My hope is that THE Body, will truly become HIS Body.

Day 4 - Is it easy to come by or difficult to come by? I suppose it all depends on how individuals see their circumstances. Of course, the more trying the circumstance, the more difficult hope is to come by and yet, it is hope that keeps us going. It is easy to become "despondent" over our current economy, government, personal finances, not having "enough" and so on and so on. However, put yourself in the place of a mother in an impoverished nation frantically praying for food for her child who is slowly starving to death. Hope seems hard to come by and her situation makes our concerns seem rather petty.

Our hope is in God. So is the mother's hope... but the mother's hope is also in US, the Body of Christ, to do SOMETHING! Anything! We are the hope. We are the hope from God and of God. God has put us here to be the hope, not to get concerned about relatively petty concerns. Sometimes we need to see that we are the hope. So if we are looking for hope, the closest place to look is in the mirror but only if the mirror allows us to see others, not ourselves!
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