Hope in Uncertain Times

Welcome to the year 2023! A brand new year, chock full of possibilities. Doesn’t that sound hopeful? Maybe. It depends on your mindset and attitude. It could be a year full of good things: the end to a drought, new life coming into the world, debts paid off, relationships strengthened and restored, a country that once again seeks after God.

Or…it could be a year full of other possibilities: world-wide chaos, more sickness and disease, abortion on the rise, rising costs of everything, people moving further away from God. No one knows for sure. None of us can guarantee what will happen next.  Of course, we can look back on what has happened and worry about what is going to happen. But there IS an alternative. It is spelled H-O-P-E.

Think of some of the ways we use that little word…”I hope I get a new bicycle for Christmas!”…”I hope it is nothing serious!”…”I hope she says yes!”. There is nothing wrong with these statements. We all hope for something, somewhere, sometime about someone, something, or somewhere. Our hopes are driven by various things: love, desires, concern for another human being, finances, relationships.

An English author by the name of Alexander Pope wrote a poem that has these words, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast; Man never is, but always to be blest.” Nice words, but what happens when those sentiments come face to face with reality? What happens if the source of our hope suddenly dries up?

The REAL question, then, is what, or who, is the source of that hope? Proverbs 11:7 says, “Hopes placed in mortals die with them; all the promise of their power comes to nothing.” (ESV) We tend to place our hope in the wrong places. Think of all the promises that are made during elections. Not much hope there. We might have someone in our life that we look up to, but we must remember that they are a fragile, finite, fallible human being just like us.

Our problem is that we place our trust in fallible human institutions or individuals who will fail, without exception. What we need to do is to place that trust and hope in One Who is above all of this world’s imperfections. One Who is INFALLIBLE and IMMORTAL.

That ONE is Jesus Christ, the “founder and perfecter of our faith”. (Hebrews 12:2)