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April 22, 2005
Faith : Understanding Hope
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13
I read that verse early in my Christian walk and saw no great depth in these three persistent gifts. After all, I thought, you needed faith to become a Christian; having that faith you had the hope that someday you would get to spend eternity in heaven with God, and in the mean time, we should be loving to each other. Even the fact that these were in fact gifts (look at the context of the verse) - that God gives us the ability to have faith, the ability to have hope, and the ability to love - was lost on me.
However, as I grew to know God better, he taught me many things about Love that I did not understand at first – how the only thing of value in the world are other people and that love comes from appreciating that value. Likewise he taught me many things about Faith that I did not appreciate at first – how the essence of sin is not rules and behavior, but lacking faith in God and that the actions all come first from not trusting God to fulfill us. I could go on for pages with the things I have learned about Love and Faith over the last 36 years (and perhaps will over time).
Yet, I realized when I came across that verse again a couple of years ago that my understanding of Hope had not likewise progressed. Now there is nothing that says all three had to be of equal depth; but nonetheless I started to pray that if I was lacking understanding of hope, that God would teach me it as well. In the short term, nothing happened; but recently God has started to show me more.
What I am learning is that Christian Hope is about knowing we have a place in the universe. That God has a plan for our lives, and therefore that our lives have purpose and meaning. Yes, as I appreciated when I first read that verse, that plan includes being able to spend eternity with him, and there is hope in that; but hope is not just for the future, it is also for now.
I say that because I have begun to understand that God knows us and built his plan for each of us taking everything that will happen to us into account. God knows everything that is going to happen to each of us. God knows every time someone will hurt us. God knows every time we are going to stumble and fail. And God has built his plan for us taking all of that into account. His desire is to redeem every failure and every pain by turning those experiences into strength which can then use to help other people. I have started to realize that this is the basis for Christian hope. Not just that one day we will escape this world and get to go to heaven; but that even here and now everything we experience can be used for good if we simply allow God to put us where he needs us to be.
If we are faithful and obedient, no matter what we are going through, we can look forward to God's plan to transform it into benefit.
That's a reason to be hopeful.
Posted by Steven at April 22, 2005 07:17 PM
Comments
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