Hope

Jeremiah is nicknamed “the weeping prophet”. He had a nature of being gloomy and downcast. If you have spent any time reading through the book penned by him, Lamentation, you will be quick to realize why that nickname is so fitting. His grief over God’s people is tangible. His heartache over them turning their heart from the covenant they made with Him is evident. Jeremiah had the burden of being a prophet when God’s people could not have cared less that they were God’s people. And yet Jeremiah found himself, as downcast as he was, not without hope.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:24

The word hope in this verse is the Hebrew word yāhal, meaning wait, hope, expect. Jeremiah was not only clinging to hope but was also staying with the expectation that the Lord would supply hope to him. Jeremiah couldn’t muster up the hope he needed to carry the weight of his weary soul; only the Lord could do that. And neither can you.
We wait with the expectation of hope in this advent season. But why is hope important? Why is it necessary? Why is the hope of Christ one of the promises we receive from Him?
Because the reality is that difficult times surround us or will soon surround us. They hit us like a colossal wave out of nowhere; circumstances leave us disoriented and confused about what happened and where to go next. Hope anchors us.

The security of our hope depends upon the security of what we have placed our hope in. If our hope source is faulty and fragile, then when the waves of life come to beat us down, they will carry us off. There will be nothing secure and steadfast anchoring us to a solid place. Sand and waves go hand in hand. Sand goes where the waves take it. A secure foundation of hope means our hope must be anchored to rock, not sand. The rock is solid and secure. It’s not being tossed about when waves come; it remains. Our hope must be anchored to the rock, which is Jesus.
It is okay to feel hopeless. I have been there more times than I can count. Feeling hopeless is not the measure of a follower of Christ. Feeling hopeless is the measure of being human. There is a difference between the reality of feeling hopeless and the knowledge that despite it, you are, in fact, not without hope. Those two things can exist at once. Feeling and knowing are two separate things.

Feeling hopeless does not mean that what we have placed our hope in is faulty; it means our ability to cling to it when life gets hard is faulty because we are human. Fixing your eyes on Jesus gets much more complicated when life spins out of control. But in the center of the storm, there is always peace to be found! And that peace is Christ. Cling to knowing that Christ is your hope, even when all hope feels lost. Wait with the expectation that He who supplied perfect hope to you once before will supply it once again!