A Living Hope

Today I heard, Don't put your hope in things that won't last.  It's true that hope is one of the best things, one of the best!  It's one of the three; faith, hope and love abide.  But, misguided hope is truly dangerous.  If I place my hope in things that will die, my hope will die.  And when it does, it shakes the ground on which the other two stand.  I doubt my faith and I doubt that love is really true and really for me.

First Peter talks about a living hope.  Imagine that, a hope that not only can't die, but a hope that is actually alive and awake and beating with your own heartbeat and whispering mysteries.  God, I need that!  I can't go on without that.

I've recently come to a place of watching hopes die, and forcing myself to put some to death, if not for good, at least for a time.  I'm slowly recognizing that some were hopes that I never should have had in the first place.  I desire to walk with God as if nothing else matters, yet my heart seems to get pulled in so many different directions.  Pulled and pulled hard.

I begin to hope for certain outcomes and certain experiences.  I feel so many if onlys.  If only I could, if only she would, if only it did.  They all point to one thing, I will never be satisfied.  I place my hope in things that fail me and then I begin to doubt my heart and I look on it as a traitor.  It made me hope for the thing that would never happen, it made me want the thing that I shouldn't, or am not ready, to have.

My heart tells me its desires and wants me to pursue them because it does not trust.  It views so many things as objects of pursuit that it can't possibly pursue them all.  It tries.  It tries to chase down every hint of something that will possibly satisfy and it ends up pulling itself apart.  I want satisfaction and I want fulfillment and at times it feels like there are so many things that I need in order to get there.  So many things.

One thing.

Really.  It doesn't sound at all likely, or even possible.  Just one thing.  A living hope.  A living hope that cannot die... because it already did.  One thing.  I repeat it to my heart, just one.  It means letting go of all the others, the ones that feel so good and so right and wind up killing me.

For his birthday my brother got a CD with a song that says, "In your presence, God, I'm completely satisfied."  One thing.  Seek it first and everything else will come.  All these things may be good.  At their core they are hope.  But are they part of the one hope?  When I seek them first I arrive at their conclusion, which is death.

I want one thing and one thing only, to love God with all my heart, soul, strength, and mind.  Because hope is good, and so is faith, but the greatest is love.

Love never fails.