Source of Hope

Linus and Lucy in Peanut

It looked like Saturday morning TV time at the Van Pelt household. Lucy and Linus were sitting in front of the television set when Lucy said to Linus,

“Go get me a glass of water”

Linus looked surprised. “Why should I do anything for you?” he said.
“You never do anything for me”

“On your seventy-fifth birthday,” Lucy promised, “I’ll bake you a cake”

Linus got up, headed for the kitchen, and said,

“Life is more pleasant when you have something to look forward to”

One thing that comes to mind as I read Peanut’s comic-strip above in the newspaper was this: Hope gives us something to look forward to. Remove hope from someone’s life and you make him or her life worthless. Unbelievable as it may seem, it is possible for a person to live up to 70 days without food. It is also possible to exist for nearly 10 days without water. And one can live for up to 6 minutes without air. But there is one thing it is impossible to live without – hope.

Chuck Swindoll, one of my favorite preacher and author wrote, “Hope is a wonderful gift from God, a source of strength and courage in the face of life’s harshest trials. When we are trapped in a tunnel of misery, hope points to the light at the end. When we are overworked and exhausted, hope gives us fresh energy. When we are discouraged, hope lifts our spirits. When we are tempted to quit, hope keeps us going”.

Question, who or what is our hope? As Christ followers, the Scripture pointed to us: “O Lord, you alone are my hope” (Psalms 71:5, NLT). God is our hope. Question, where or how to gain hope? The answer is: “the Scriptures give us hope” (Romans 15:4, in context ‘the Scriptures’ here refer to the OT Scriptures. NT also can be applied here). Hope in God is cultivated as we read God’s Word in the Bible. Its stories and promises remind us of God’s faithfulness and His great plan for His people. As we see how God’s hand has worked miraculous ways throughout the Bible history, we will find ourselves gaining hope and confidence that He will work in our future as well.

Each day we can read God’s Word and have our hopes renewed and reinforced. Faith in God look to the past events; love from God sustain us in the present; hope in God look to His future promises. Each new day as we read God’s Word, it is able to lift us up. Cursed are those who put their trust and hope in something or someone else other than God, “but blessed are those who trust in the LORD and have made the LORD their hope and confidence” (Jeremiah 17:7, NLT). God alone is our hope, the Scripture tells us so.

“As we journey through life the thing we long for is hope.

There is no greater source of hope than God’s Word” (Sandi Patti)

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.