THE TWO SIDES OF HOPE

So faith, hope, love abide, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13:13

It is true that the greatest of these is love, but it's also true that the power to love will not be with us long … if faith withers or if hope dies.

So faith, hope, love abide....

If the greatest of these is love, we often think that the least of these must be hope. Surely in our lives the most neglected of these is hope.

It's almost as if hope is a luxury ... "it's nice to have it, but if it disappears we have to get along without it." Many of us have been trying to exercise faith and manifest love in our daily lives, while hope in God, which was once our constant companion has shriveled to almost nothing.

We have resigned ourselves to a kind of vague depression, like a dull spiritual headache that you get up with every morning thinking that perhaps as the day wears on it will go away.

But to be without hope is really to be without a purpose, without a goal,

without anything to look forward to.

So you get through the day as best you can....

- take care of the business at hand,
- look after the kids,

- pay the bills ... eat... sleep,

- talk about hockey, politics, babies or cars,
- watch some T.V.

and wait for something to happen to relieve the monotony.

But once we've had some vision of the kingdom of God,

some taste of the glory of Jesus Christ,

to sink back into this aimless drifting

is like being in the vestibule of Hell itself.

And if we remain in this state very long whatever faith and whatever

love we have will soon be gone too.

Just as surely as the Holy Spirit brings us to faith in Jesus, and just as surely as the Spirit causes the love of God to be shed abroad in our hearts, the same Holy Spirit fills us with hope.

And this gift of hope is essential to us if we are to fulfill our purpose in this world and endure in God into the next.

Hope has two sides:

1. God's side

2. Our side.

God's side is to give us hope as a gift.

Our side is to keep that hope aimed at God and at nothing else.

On God's side, God sends us his Son to be our hope.

..."The root of Jesse shall come, he who rises to rule the Gentiles;

in him shall the Gentiles hope."

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Romans 15:12-13

Why do you think Peter left his fishing boat and everything familiar ... forsook all to follow Jesus?

Peter's first response to Jesus was not faith or love, but hope. Jesus was the first real hope Peter had ever seen. He knew there was more to life than just catching fish and sitting around in the evening swapping stories.

"Fear not, from now on you'll be catching men."

At last Peter was given hope of entering a life that made sense and had purpose...a life burning with the life of God.

Everywhere Jesus went he gave people hope.

- Hope for the lame.
- Hope for the blind.
- Hope for the hungry.
- Hope for the dead.

- Hope for the most hopeless sinner.

And every one of us who has come into the knowledge of Jesus Christ

has experienced this hope. It was like the doorway to a new life... a fresh beginning ... like falling in love. We began walking with Jesus and every day was a new adventure, a joy. We were looking forward to the City of God at the end of the journey. We were looking forward to the work of God we were to be part of each day. And the Spirit of the Lord refreshed that hope and kept it alive in us all along the way.

But then somehow our eyes of hope, which at first were only for the Master, began to turn and look to other things as well. Now I begin to put my hope in a particular person who has come to mean so much to me ...

my friend,

my leader,
my child,

my husband or wife.

Or I attach my hope to some enterprise I'm part of....

my church,

my business,

my career,

my dream of success.

And now I'm doing …

what the people of Israel did in their wilderness journey.

The God who had been their hope as they passed through the Red Sea to freedom, and had remained their hope as they followed the cloud and the pillar of fire…

is now put aside for a golden calf.

When we mix our hope in God with hope in

… some golden calf we end up disappointed

... things don't work out the way we'd hoped they would.

And after we've had two or three of these disappointments

… or fifty or a hundred

… we develop a fear of hoping in anything

… a superstitious belief that whenever I hope something will turn out

good it always turns out bad.

"It doesn't pay to hope," we say.

But the problem is not that we made a mistake by hoping,

the problem is that we misdirected our hope.

We allowed it to drift from God to some golden calf.

Our side of hope is to make sure it's never aimed at an idol,

but always at God.

Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul?

And why art thou disquieted within me?

Hope thou in God for I shall yet praise him,

who is the health of my countenance and my God.

Psalm 42:11 KJV

"Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul?"

Many of us have allowed our superstitious fear of having any hope to undermine our hope in God.

"You never know what God might do. It's best not to hope at all."

But it was not God who disappointed our hope.

It was the golden calf ... the distorted ideas of God

... which we knew were distorted when we accepted them.

Why art thou cast down, 0 my soul?

and why art thou disquieted within me?....

If there's any exhortation we need to listen to and act on its this one ---

“HOPE IN GOD”

Hope in God for the unfolding of his purpose in each day, whether the

day seems bad or good as we look out the window. What a difference

it makes if we approach it hoping in God. God made the day.

He gave it to us.
He's in it.

And his desire toward us in this day is nothing but good. The fruits of our Lord's death and resurrection are waiting to be gathered in this day. Even the disruptions and disappointments become our friends when we meet them hoping in God.

We need to hope in God for the working out of his good will in answer to our prayers. We're praying to him about …

that wound,

that heartache,

that person we love whom we're worried about.

What a difference when we pray in hope.

- How can we pray in faith

... if we have no hope.

- But if we pray in hope,

... we'll soon have faith.

And we need to hope in God that we shall soon see the face of Jesus as

we reach the end of our journey.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully,

even as I have been fully understood.

I Corinthians 13:12

An excerpt from God Speaks by Charles Peguy. Translated from the French by Julian Green. Pantheon Books

“I am, says God, the Master of the Three Virtues.

Faith is a faithful wife.
Charity is a mother burning with devotion.
But hope is a tiny girl.

I am, says God, Master of Virtues.

Faith is she who remains steadfast during centuries and centuries

Charity is she who extends during centuries and centuries.

But my little hope is she who rises each morning