DAILY READING
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REFLECTION
Cure for Hopelessness
by Mary Alice McGinnis
When was a time in your life when you lost all hope?
For me, one such time was between 2006 and 2008. I was single, struggling to make ends meet, and trying to sell my home. Then the mortgage market crashed.
The realtors would show my home to potential buyers. Week after week, month after month, after each showing, the buyers would give the same feedback. They did not like the wallpaper in the kitchen, or the yard was too small, or the “this” or the “that” was not just right.
I was drowning financially. After a year and half of this cycle, I began to lose hope. Even though it was against my conscience, I decided that if I did not have my home sold by September 1, 2008, I would start the foreclosure process.
In the beginning of August my house went into contract. I was elated!
But more trouble was yet to come. The buyers had asked that some work be done. A contractor friend and his two sons offered to help me. The first day they began the work, a swarm of hornets stung the oldest son. He was rushed to the hospital for an allergic reaction nearly going into anaphylactic shock.
After two long years, the sale was finalized. Because of the steep downturn of home values, I had to bring money to the closing to get out from under my underwater mortgage.
I kept wondering, “When is all of this going to end? Why was God allowing this to happen?”
Have you been there? Maybe you are in a situation right now where you find yourself asking those same questions.
Today’s reading really speaks to me. “Against all hope, Abraham believed . . .”
What did Abraham do when he was faced with impossible circumstances?
“Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God . . .”
The cure for hopelessness is putting your hope in something that is absolutely SURE!
Biblical hope is not “wishful thinking.”
It’s not unrealistically seeing things with rose colored glasses.
It is CONFIDENT EXPECTATION!
In what can we place this kind of hope? What is the ONLY thing can we 100% rely upon and live in confident expectation?
“. . .being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”
Death is the epitome of hopelessness. From a merely human vantage point, there is no coming back from it, there is no changing it. It is permanent. It is the result of sin. All humanity is marked by the permanent stain of sin. There is no fixing it.
Yet, Jesus purposely walked into the hopelessness of our world. Though He was perfect, he experienced betrayal, pain, loss. He suffered and was abandoned by all. He looked down through time and saw your failures and mine. He took on the punishment we deserved.
On the cross, He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He died!
Yet, death and sin did not have the final say.
“. . . who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
Are you walking through what seems like the valley of the shadow of death right now? Is the wrongs you have done, or the evil around you feel overwhelming? How can you - against all hope - place your confidence in our God who is willing and able to keep His promises?
How does the truth that Jesus was “raised to life” and lives as your resurrected King give you strength to face whatever comes today, tomorrow or in the future?
PRAYER PRACTICE
Bring your heart in prayer to our Resurrected King through the words of this song today.
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