What brings you hope?

I think some people’s hopes are built on fantasy and wishful thinking. “I’ll win the lottery next week, or the week after, and then everything will be alright…” “Once I go and live there, or do that, or meet the right person… it will all come together.”

Perhaps I’m just unromantic and desperately un-idealistic, but it’s never worked for me yet.

My Bible reading talked about hope this morning. The two things that it said brought hope were not at all romantic or idealistic. It said, ‘endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures’ brought hope.

Endurance? Ick. The word brings to mind cross country running or early morning swimming, both things that I try to avoid. Endurance is not a pretty picture.

And as for the ‘encouragement of the Scriptures’? Being completely honest, reading the Bible isn’t always the activity I look forward to the most (although I’m usually glad once I do it!)

But perhaps there is another way to see it.

Endurance: the idea that we have had the strength, with God, to get through today. We survived! It was ok!

The encouragement of the Scriptures: The idea that tomorrow is another day in God’s care, another day with his strength, and many many better days coming when we go to be with him!

Rather than finding hope from a false ideal or change of circumstances, true hope comes from God’s strength in us for today, and God’s grace in us for tomorrow. Pray that I’ll both endure and soak in the encouragement of the Scriptures.

Romans 15:4 For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.