This week we were asked to reflect on our own hope as Christians - what is the reason for my hope? I have been contemplating that a lot this week, my hope, and have found this to be a difficult task to really define specifically as it relates to my personal faith.
I think there is a huge difference between hoping for something and hoping in something. But somehow both phrases complete each other as it relates to my faith. I HOPE IN Christ to love me, forgive me, help me, strengthen me, guide me, carry me through, teach me, and complete me. I HOPE FOR happiness, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness and most of all peace in my own life and in this world. In other words, through my trust IN Christ, I might receive the fruits of the Spirit and might also contribute to that fruit within this world.
Hope is defined as:
hope (hp)
v. hoped, hop·ing, hopes
v.intr.
1. To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Archaic To have confidence; trust.
I believe those two definitions together cover my own reflection on what hope is to me. As a Christ follower, each day I must place my confidence and trust IN Christ. This essential daily releasing then provides the possibility to "wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment". The SOMETHING being the key element in Christian hope. This SOMETHING to me represents the reconciliation of our world in its fallen state to the ultimate vision of God's promise of a kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.. That is my SOMETHING. That one day, this world will return to the Garden. That the pages between Genesis 1 and Revelation 22 will be completed and God in full Trinity will be with us.
This is the Gospel - that the reconcilliation is in progress and that one day it will be complete and that the doorway to this kingdom comes through Jesus Christ. He is the promise, He is the HOPE, He is the ONLY WAY to this paradise. It is the constant promise through scripture for thousands of years.
Just this morning in my quiet time I was lead to this scripture from Jeremiah (emphasis mine):
31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their forefathers
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to [a] them, [b] "
declares the LORD.
33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel
after that time," declares the LORD.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,"
declares the LORD.
"For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more."
Thousands of years ago, God shared his vision of the final days - that one day "they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest". This is our hope, and this defines our purpose. To live our lives each day in confidence and trust that through Jesus we will be part of the kingdom where ALL will know God from the least to the greatest, and this is what we wish for with "expectation of it's fulfillment".
That is my hope
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