Hope

My husband and I are in full-time church ministry.  And we are continually reminded that we do not hold the future, God does.  Being a mother, wife, daughter and sister I feel pulled in many directions with wishes and desires for our young family's life.  I think pretty constantly about the future.  I suppose it's how I'm geared in many ways.  I'm the kind of person who has a strong desire to be "settled".  And it's just been recently that I have come to terms with the idea that this desire is simply a wish.  Nowhere in scripture does it say anything about being 'settled'.  And perhaps more importantly it is often the case that as we are open to God's leading and direction life takes turns and moves in ways we never could have imagined.  

A couple days ago my mother-in-law sent me an excerpt from Living the Message/Daily Reflections with Eugene H. Peterson.  This excerpt helped me come to a new understanding of what I am called to as a believer.  I am called to HOPE.  I am called to hope for what God will do in and through me.  I am called to "live in anticipation of what God is going to do next." 

What a fantastic way to live life.  Not projecting onto God what I want him to do next, but rather living in joyful anticipation for what he desires to do.   So with this said, I am trying to surrender the wish I have to be 'settled', to know what will be for our family.  Instead I will focus on hoping for all that God wants for us.  And through this discipline of hoping I anticipate God will teach me greater openness, greater dependence and greater faith in all he has in store. 

Subject: Wishing and Hoping

It is essential to distinguish between hoping and wishing.   They are not the same thing.

Wishing is something all of us do.  It projects what we want or think we need into the future.   Just because we wish for something good or holy we think it qualifies as hope.  It does not.  Wishing extends our egos into the future: hope desires what God is going to do - and we don't yet know what that is.

Wishing grows out of our egos: hope grows out of our faith.   Hope is oriented toward what God is doing: wishing is oriented toward what we are doing.  Wishing has to do with what I want in things or people or God: hope has to do with what God wants in me and the world of things and people beyond me.

Wishing is our will projected into the future, and hope is God's will coming out of the future.   Picture it in your mind: wishing is a line that comes out of me, with an arrow pointing into the future.   Hoping is a line that comes out of God from the future, with an arrow pointing toward me.

Hope means being surprised, because we don't know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed.  To cultivate hope is to suppress wishing - to refuse to fantasize about what we want, but live in anticipation of what God is going to do next.

                ...alert for whatever God will do next.  In alert expectancy
                such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged.  Quite
                the contrary --we can't round up enough containers to hold
                everything God generously pours into our lives through the 

             Holy Spirit.

                                                  Romans 5:4B-5

Oct. 24/Living the Message/Daily Reflections with Eugene H. Peterson