Something to hope in and something to hope for!

How to stay hopeful in the midst of it all is something which is often hard to do.

Some people have the natural ability to always be hopeful to always be full of grace and to always display dignity. I know at times they break down as well but somehow they are good about not showing it. However, I wonder if that is a good thing.

Grace and hope and faith are hard to find when life pushes your limits. It is through the support encouragement and love of others we are able to be strong, grow in the midst of trials and learn from our failures and mistakes.

There are plenty of things Andrew and I would like to be more graceful, hopeful, or faithful in. Don’t we all have the laundry list of things that everyone just wants to be? Somehow life happens and it never comes to reality.

The latest research paper I did for my doctoral work was studying the Hebrews 11 text and how “by faith” was so integral in this chapter. Each character in some fashion, explicitly or not lived a life “by faith” a life each of us wants to emulate but a life that makes a difference for generations to come.

With this past weeks sermon I was reminded there is a difference in what you put your faith and hope in and what you have faith to hope for. We can hope for things that does not happen, we can have faith to hope for lives changed, eyes open, people healed, people brought home. Our faith needs to only have one location and that is in God. It is through this hope IN him that we can have hope FOR things.

May today be bright, the light be vivid and the joy be apparent.