HOPE digs DEEP

When Christ is in the heart, the nature of hope changes. It digs deeper than wishful thinking and motivates action when it seems any amount of action won’t help.

I was digging a ditch a long time ago when I had little money. Putting a shovel and pick through hard Virginia clay laced with rock is an exhausting process. If I did not succeed, repairs to keep a road from being washed out would fail. After two days of digging I wondered if I would every complete the task, but I believed I was to continue the task. After a few days of sweaty work, I succeeded. Perhaps it seems a strange and small issue to pray about, but I did. I never forgot the lesson.

Moving forward to the last few years as my wife’s cancer is now advanced, her strength, balance, and energy level is affected. Yet, she continues to forge ahead, to make use of time, and to serve others as she can. She lives in a tired state but refuses to give in to it any more than she has to.

We just returned from the Philippines. She suffered some serious symptoms from the cancer while there, but pushed forward with a hope that goes deeper than a wish. Even after an unexpected hospital stay while overseas, she was asked to share a word on hope…the kind that comes out of faith in Christ. Needing a walker and moving slowly toward the podium, she shared about that same kind of hope. It is the one that comes from the Anchor of our souls.

I shared very briefly after she was done, explaining how we move forward by faith, even when it is so unsure whether we will both be alive the next morning. I explained that I know what it is like to look over the bed to your spouse, wondering if we will both be alive the next morning. We find that such situations are not motivation to cease walking by faith. Rather, they are motivation to continue walking in faith as much as our bodies and minds will permit. We continue because of His promise to retrieve us, to keep us, and to not let us go.

A simple search in the Scriptures on <hope> would fill a lot of space in this story. But this is the next step for the reader, especially if this kind of hope seems foreign. You will find the word in a biblical sense is related to how we know the Christ, the One who is able to save and keep us for himself, regardless of what circumstances we suffer.