Living Hope in Hard Times
1 Corinthians 13:13 says: “Now, 3 things will last forever: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is love.” All three bring us to Jesus in different ways.
Faith connects us to God even in hard situations.
Love holds us together with other people and with God.
Hope can have an wonderfully powerful effect on our thinking and our actions, but I wonder if we too often underestim-ate the importance of it in our lives, especially when we may be feeling like we are at the end of our rope, the end of our patience, the end of our strength, our motivation, our money or the end of our ability to regulate our emotions.
Its interesting to me that the Hebrew word for “hope” is the same word as the Hebrew word for “rope” or “strong cord.” The truth is that the rope is a picture of hope. God is like that strong cord. He doesn’t break even in the heavy and the hard moments. He holds on to us.
Katherine Wolf was 26 when she had a brain stem stroke, which left her partially paralyzed on the right side of her face and body, double vision, and deafness in her right ear. The doctors weren’t very hopeful about her life; however, she defied their expectations. In Hope Heals: A True Story of Overwhelming Loss and an Overcoming Love, Katherine says this about hope:
“There is something profound about hope, something so meaningful when you cling to what is beyond anything you know and understand. When that happens deep in your head and in your heart, something shifts. Hope heals.”
I love that idea that God’s hope heals, and I very clearly remember the moment as a 5 year old that I first wrestled with God about hoping He would heal me in some way. Luke gives us one of my favourite interactions with Jesus in his account of the paralyzed man who is literally at the end of his ropes. His four friends lowered him down through a hole in the roof because they knew he needed the hope and healing Jesus brings. It was bedtime and I was looking at the picture in the storybook of the expectant faces of those four friends looking down through the hole in the roof. They expected something good was going to happen, and it did. Just like for that man, Jesus wants us all to have spiritual healing. I felt tears gathering and deep emotions I didn’t know how to express as I asked my mom “Will … Jesus … heal … me?” This powerful question gave way to hope for me too. I didn’t know what that healing was going to look like then, but the hope of Jesus’ healing is real to me. My family and friends became my personal version of “the four friends.” They love me and aren’t afraid to bring me to God in prayer. Hope is knowing that we can expect good and redemptive things from God.
When I was seven, I got what you might call a big dose of hope that changed my thinking. My dad got a job in Missouri, and along with that move came new doctors. My first medical appointment in the States was with Dr. Janice Brunstrom-Hernandez. She was a neurologist who specialized in Cerebral Palsy who also had cerebral palsy herself. She wore arm braces and struggled with walking, and she did NOT sugar-coat anything she said. She introduced herself and the different things I was going to do in the next few hours to help her evaluate my abilities and needs. Then within the first 5 minutes of our four-hour appointment she threw me a lifeline of hope as she spoke beautiful, crazy words about friends she had who were working on treatments for Cerebral Palsy. She boldly believed there would be a cure for cerebral palsy, if not in her lifetime, then within my lifetime. No one, I repeat, no one has had the audacity to say that to us before! Ever!
I am obviously still in a wheelchair and need a little extra help to speak clearly, but I have already experienced so much healing in my life: spiritually, medically and miraculously.
When we understand who God is, that’s when we can start to understand what our hope in Christ is. When we have the hope of Christ, we begin to think differently about ourselves. He is the hope we need. Jesus understands that all of us – able-bodied and disabled – need the freedom to struggle with those extremely hard questions that we have as well as the love and forgiveness of God in our lives to help us break out of our destructive thoughts and emotions. I know that we will experience more moments of wrestling with God over each season of our lives, but we must know that we can always trust God to be working for our good. God loves us. He loves you. And He has good plans for you. They are not easy plans, but they are good plans for each of us.
