Last week on Facebook I asked the question, “Which is worse, physical pain or emotional pain?” I sensed that most of the answers came from places of deep pain and overwhelmingly agreed that emotional pain is worse. I would agree.
We can wear smiles and seem happy to people looking at us on the outside, but we are the only ones besides God who knows what is going on inside of us.
I read a comment today in a book on trust that said in essence that when we meet Jesus, he will not be looking at us for our accomplishments but for our scars. We are all deeply wounded at some level in our souls. That’s why Jesus came. To heal those wounds.
Which brings me to verses I want to share with you this week – verses that reflect hope. God’s love and our hope in Him go hand in hand. If not for His great love, where would be our hope? If His nail-scarred hands are not a sign of His love, what is? Hope can be a fragile or sturdy thing, partly because we have to know where we are placing that hope. If I hope without reason, blindly believing all will turn out okay in the end, that is not the same as hope with certainty. Trust in God is assurance of what we hope for, it is evidence for what is real but unseen.
Do you have that kind of hope? Can you say with certainty, that despite what may come, you know God can be trusted? That He is worthy of our hope because He loves us more than we can fathom?
Sometimes in our broken world it is hard to see God’s love. Randy and I were discussing that tonight and I will admit, there are no easy answers to how evil and suffering and God’s love all somehow fit together. Job experienced all of these things, and in the end, he still clung to hope in his Creator, the Almighty God because he admitted that God was way beyond his understanding.
And yet he knew that one day he would see God and that his Redeemer would stand on the earth. And this was hundreds of years before Jesus came.
Truth has no timetable. God’s love and purpose is the same as it has always been. We cry out today for understanding the same way the Psalmists did long ago.
And maybe we will be granted eyes to see and know. And maybe we won’t. But we can do as the ancients did who trusted the Lord. We can hang onto hope. Because whether we understand Him or not in our finite ability to grasp truth, if we have been to the dark places with Him, we know – we KNOW – God can be trusted.
Never stop hoping. Selah~ #liveloveprayhope #ourhopeisingod #evidenceofthingshopedfor #neverlosehope
