From a commercial I saw once long ago...(from memory)...
How long can a person live without food? 10-14 days
How long can a person live without water? 3-5 days
How long can a person live without air? 3-5 minutes
How long can a person live without hope? …..
Circumstances in each of these can produce different results but the end-point is clear enough.
In deference to that, it is no secret that this time of year is concomitantly both the most joyous and the most difficult for many of us.
As of this reading, Christmas will have passed and New Year’s Eve is yet to come. What will be the focus of your thoughts and lives this week? Today? The past year? The coming year? Likely it will be all of these, if not more.
But if we are honest with ourselves, it really all comes down to what we live for....something we honestly don’t usually much think about until and unless hardships strike.
What is it that we hope for? The word “hope” is such a wide term. Maybe the better word is “need,” in all its truest meaning.
Proverbs 30: 8-9 says this, “Remove far from me falsehood and lies; Give me neither poverty nor riches; Feed me with the food that is needful for me: Lest I be full and deny Thee, and say, Who is Jehovah? Or lest I be poor and steal and use profanely the name of my God.”
The key word here is needful. Maybe another question to ask is this: what is the difference between “want” and “need”? All of this really comes back to hope and what exactly we hope for. The difference between what we want and what we need is something we all too often obfuscate.
The answer to this is faith...a word we use so often, yet fall so short in understanding what it truly is, inextricably tied as it is to hope and the realization that God knows us far better than we ourselves do.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1.
Whatever difficulties you face and however insurmountable they may seem to you, there is hope. True hope, the likes of which nothing and no one in this world can offer. This very same hope... this faith...when placed in Christ Jesus, is exactly what He speaks of to you: “These things have I spoken unto you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33.
In this, know that your Creator and Redeemer not only cares for you personally but also calls you today to receive Him into His love, His forgiveness and His gift of eternal salvation: “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.” Jeremiah 29:11-13.
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