Do you ever get wrapped up in your stuff? Do you ever say, “If it was not for my personal gifts and what I have, there would be no hope”?
So. Life is hope less without stuff?
I make no excuse. My faith reveals to me that when Jesus walked and talked with people in pain, it was God at the very same time. God-Come-Down. The eye of faith will see this. The eye of reason will not. There is a difference. More to come.
Anyway, God’s desire in that event was presence — being available in the human experience. God does not promise to make everything well and good even though we wish God could and would. God does not keep bad things from happening to good people even though we wish God could and would. No. God’s promise through Jesus and later through the grace of God is that God is present with us, in our lives, when the lights go out. That is what hope is: the awareness that no one is ever alone, that God cares, and that even should the future show no signs of getting better, God is still present.
Hope is the ability to see when there is nothing to see, to go forward when there seems to be no way forward, and to know you are not alone when sometimes it seems that way.
Hope is the deep down awareness that
ALL THERE IS
IS NOT ALL THERE IS.