A Willingness To Hope

Today’s Reflection

JOHN THE BAPTIST is (an) adventurer, stalking through the wilderness of his time on the trail of the Messiah. He’s the original hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, but he also offers hope to the community he rakes over the coals.

A willingness to hope is a willingness to enter the wilderness. Hope is not a domesticated state of mind. It seems to camp out in odd places, crops up at the worst possible times.

Just as we resign ourselves to the minimum wages of life with no benefits, hope whispers that we shouldn't settle for despair’s bottom line. Hope thrives in the barren places of our lives.

- Heather Murray Elkins
From page 360 of The Upper Room Disciplines 2006: A Book of Daily Devotions.


I am enraptured by hope. Hope's got me at "Hello." It is like Type O blood. The universal donor type. It is what everyone can use any time and I can use all the time. Hope is stuffed with what Kim at Ambushed by God calls "wonderfullness."

Anything you have plus hope is a game changer. A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G!

I have a few friends who are about to see hope roll up its sleeves. I am already getting the banners and balloons ready for the finish line and juice in little cups as they run through the wilderness toward it. Hope is calling to the resources God prepared in advance to snap to attention. Water producing rocks, angel food, angels-big ones!

Hope draws our faint hearts like a magnet. It is a miracle producing alliance that hooks up with faith and boasts facts not in evidence. What a thing! Who but God could come up with such a wonder? Just when you think you only have a mite-size version, faith and hope come along and super-size it. What an economy!

Hope understands Hard. It just refuses to be bullied by it.

To my family, friends and readers who need it, hope is calling you by name. Hope has packed your suitcase for the journey and paid for your ticket. When you think you cannot go another step, hope will see that you get there. Hope has filled the bleachers with a cheering section just for you. I will be happily among them. You will do the same for me.

How can we fail?
Look who loves us!
We worship the God who is Hope!

-Kat