Hope

I subscribe to a verse of the day e-mail from the K-LOVE radio network. Today's verse is Psalm 33:22,

Let your unfailing love surround us, Lord, for our hope is in you alone.

As it happens, I was in the middle of organizing my day when I read the verse. It occurred to me that, in all my planning, I wasn't hoping in the Lord to give me strength, but trusting in my own organizational skills to be able to fit everything in that I wanted to do today.

This may seem like a minor distinction, God having given me whatever talents I may possess, and having granted the ability to learn skills, but I think it's an important little difference.

You see, if my focus is on organizing, getting every part of my day set up perfectly, putting all the plans in place, the focus of my day is on, you got it, me. I start to think I am the one making it all happen, rather than God working through me.

Furthermore, I started to pray a bit as I finished reading the verse. I prayed that God would help me to keep my hope in Him alone. Which was when I considered: God's been trying to teach me this lesson for months. In fact, I got much better at trusting and hoping in Him when I didn't have any reserviors of energy, money, or hope. But the moment I start having resources of my own again, I shift back into coast mode. It's as if I tell God, "Okay, I've got it from here. I'll call You if I need You."

Maybe my real problem isn't so much the hope issue itself, but the attitude I've been ascribing to God. I tend to see God as very busy, as if all of my little concerns are just keeping Him away from His "real" work. What I fail to realize is that God is never busy. I often wish I could just take time out of my schedule to play with my daughter without the cursor on my mental to-do list blinking incessantly at me. This is one of the reasons I'm trying to organize my time better. But God's to-do list is already done! It is finished. He's got, as they say, nothing but time to spend with each and every one of us. And there is nothing He desires more.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
From Romans 8.