Finding Hope

It is likely that most of us have been through a time when hope seemed far away.

There was a time in my own life when I remember people wanted me to go find some hope, like life was a hope scavenger hunt for the weary. But hope seemed crafty to me, slippery. I couldn’t seem to catch it even though I wanted it so badly. I thirsted for it, but there was only desert, no oasis, not even a trickle of hope.

There are times the task of finding hope seems insurmountable. You can know God and still find yourself somehow parched when it comes to hope. Life crashes in and all the hope drains from our faces, our hearts, our minds - when a child is lost, a friendship abandoned, a marriage left out to dry. We find ourselves with health issues, we encounter community violence in our backyard, we face injustice, or we’re forced to confront nature’s power, rather than its promises.

It is normal to have moments when we can only hold fast to the tiniest morsel of hope … and some moments when it feels like that tiny morsel has been ripped away. Sometimes, we need the people around us to bring us closer to this thing called Hope.

We need help finding hope.

God didn’t make our hope dependent on our ability to find it. God finds us. It is our connection to Jesus, to God, to each other which brings place inside of us alive again. God does not fade and does not disappoint. Jesus reaches out His hands and offers Hope:

An anchor of Hope (Hebrews 6:19)

A Hope unshaken (2 Corinthians 1:7)

A Living Hope (Ecclesiastes 9:4)

A Hope of joy (Proverbs 10:28)

A Hope when trouble comes (Jeremiah 14:8)

A Hope that does not leave us in our shame (Philippians 1:20)

A Hope that is faithful, as He is faithful (Hebrews 10:23)

And when Hope is hard to find, I think we are meant to bring it to one another. We are meant to gather up all the broken bits and transform them together, with God, with people into something truly beautiful, something we really couldn’t make all alone. God uses connection to bring Hope into the picture louder and far more lovely than we knew before we saw our reality broken, our world shaken.

We need help holding hope.

We can meet people where they need hope. We can speak hope out loud. He puts Hope in us undaunted and pouring out from our own experiences. Consider these questions:

How has God worked Hope in your own life?

What pain and challenges has He brought you through?

What adventures has He taken you on?

What rock has He set your feet upon in troubled times?

These all speak hope. We reach across the table and say, “May I tell you my story of Hope?” Because we’ve all got one…or two…or twelve. Sometimes hope hurts. And we need someone else to hold it in the form of their own story, in the form of their physical presence, until we can begin to pick it up again.

We can help by sharing hope.

We can ask questions and gather intel on what kind of hope someone needs and then fit the words to the need and God’s Word to the need, rather than waiting for Hope to show up some other way.

“How can I help you find some Hope?”

“What parts of Hope are missing?”

“What tiny hope do you have for this day, today? We can deal with tomorrow’s tiny hope tomorrow.”

“Where are you angry with God, sad with God, happy with God? That might help us get to Hope with God.”

Two years ago a leaf from our oak tree got trapped between the layers of ice in our backyard hockey rink. The leaf has fallen through a crack in the ice before someone discovered it, and the rink just froze around it. All season long we skated around that leaf and on top of that leaf, but couldn’t get it out without destroying the whole rink. Just like that rink sucked up the leaf in its unnoticed brokenness, I think our hope gets sucked up by all the broken things of life and then we feel helpless to save it without destroying the whole thing. But this is a truth wrapped in an imperfect metaphor.

Hope was never the leaf to begin with. Hope is all that is around the leaf and the rink. God’s Spirit, God’s Son, God’s sunlight, God’s snow, God’s people, God’s laughter, God’s grace…these are hope. God is Hope, and God can’t be contained in the ice.

Let us go find all this hope together each day.

My book, Finding Hope, has more on the anatomy of Hope and the relationship between Hope and the brokenness and messes we see all around us and in our own lives and families. You can order a copy using the buttons below. You can also join me for video conversations on the topic and an upcoming private reading group next year.

Join me for Hope Talks, 20-minute spiritual, community conversations about the anatomy of Hope and finding Hope together. RSVP here:

Coming Jan. 2022 – Finding Hope Live! This will be an online reading and discussion group for the book. Look for details and sign up in Fall 2021.