Hope

It seems I vanished from this place mid week and didn’t return as planned. I appreciated the responses regarding my attempt to make you laugh with our latest Wild Kingdom experience. 

That was my hope. 

And speaking of hope, that is what is on my mind today. 

How important that little word is to us. 

Hope. 

I have used it often lately and this morning I thought how it is demonstrated through the steps we take into the unknown. 

For example, I have seen nary a hummingbird this season and the weather has been ridiculous for these amusing and beautiful creatures to make an appearance. 

But this is the time we are told to start the sugar water feeders that will keep us busy every couple of days until we take the turn into autumn. 

We loved sitting out on the patio in the evenings last summer and watching the show. They would keep us laughing with their antics and my favorite was on mornings when the feeder was empty and one would hover outside the slider as I poured my coffee. 

It’s flittering motions would catch my eye as it would fly around between the glass that separates us and the empty feeder.

Okay, buddy. I get it. On my way. 

And so I have been mixing the sugar and water; filling and washing the feeder every few days. I peep out the window as I pass with expectation I will see one or three of those green iridescent-winged wonders fighting over the red plastic feeder holes.

Each day, I expect to call out to Russ that we have customers.

I am hoping.

Day by day.

I always love to visit the biblical definition of “hope”. 

Hope, in the Bible, is not a wish or an uncertain desire. 

Hope, when used in the biblical sense, is a confident and joyful expectation and assurance that God will fulfill His promises.

It is not just wishful thing or extreme optimism.

Hope is an active belief that God will show up.

We not only feel hope, we anticipate answers and we move in directions that we are led to move to be ready for those answers. 

Did God promise I would have hummingbirds this summer? 

No, not exactly. 

But I know that the likelihood is strong based on past experience. 

And so when I put my HOPE in God, I am saying that He has been faithful in the past and I am banking on Him being faithful again.

Faithfulness is part of His character. It is in His divine DNA. 

Thus, I put my HOPE in Him to come through. I move forward in the things that are not yet, with joyful anticipation that He will work His good in all things. I do things to prepare for those answers that I believe will come.

What a blessed way to live.

To pray is to HOPE in Him.

In prayer, we go to God with the things we are hoping will happen. This shows an activity motivated by a belief that He hears, He cares and He will respond. As He guides us, we are showing faith that the answer is on its way.

I hope you are putting your hope in Him. 

He is faithful.