Hope

“Our fear is that if we give into hope, we might get hurt if the things we admit we desire don’t come true.  But the truth is, apathy is not a shield that saves us.  It’s a blanket that suffocates and eventually costs us the heart we’re trying to protect.”

Lately, I find myself trying to find the balance between hope and apathy.  And it’s not really apathy in its truest form.  It’s a fake apathy that results from trying not to hope.  For no other reason than what the quote above describes; hope brings disappointment.

At the beginning of this year, I read a passage that told me to hope for a joyful year.  Literally, it said “a year of Jubilee”…which, in Jewish history was the year that debts were forgotten, slaves set free, and other awesome things.  But when the question arose of whether or not I truly believed that this year would be joyful, I was more than hesitant.  Why give in to the idea that this year will be different than any other year?

And honestly, after praying about it (inconsistently) since the New Year, I’ve come to the conclusion that I would rather hope in something than hope in nothing at all.  Even if what I’m hoping for doesn’t happen, Who I’m hoping in makes all the difference.  Living each day with hope is a lot better than living each day without it.  It really changes the way I look at things.  It changes the way I feel.  It changes my tweets from potentially saying, “today sucked”, to kneeling before God and thanking Him for the day I had.

It’s not about my circumstances.  Trust me, I’ve learned that by now.  It’s just hoping.  Pure, proof-less, invisible hope.  Try it with me.