Hope Is Not A Vaccine

Last year I was having such a hard time with the concept of hope.  I would experience it so deeply only to feel like it was snatched away like a carrot on a stick. I imagined God swinging it just out of my reach, taunting me in order to get me to move where He wanted me to go--only to pull it away for his own amusement or in order to get His way. 

Shaking my head clear of that vision (because it sounded nothing like my God; it sounded like the tactics of the enemy), I came to the realization that hope is not self-sustaining.  You don't get it once, like it's a vaccine. It needs replenished.  God isn't holding it barely out of your grasp, He's standing there with hope in His open hands. You just have to go to Him to get it. 

I cannot replenish hope. Only God can. 

The God of hope. 

In order to be replenished (filled back up) with hope, 

I have to go back to the source.

 

So I had to decide what to do with this information. I asked myself,  what is hope supposed to be like? I'm still figuring it out but I've realized that hope shouldn't be such a daily fight. It isn't meant to be lassoed or wrangled into submission, day after day. Hope is not a fleeting thing that slips from your grasp, it is substantial. The Word of God says that hope is an anchor, so maybe I need to keep throwing it out.

anchor: something that serves to hold an object firmly

If I am the boat and hope is the anchor, it holds me steady in good times and bad. Firm and secure, not tossed to and fro by the waves of life. 

Hope isn't a vaccine, it isn't a carrot, it isn't a punishment tool, it isn't for amusement, it isn't manipulation, it isn't a disappointment. It's more like a magnet that draws me closer to Christ.  In the dance of life, hope is what spins me back around to face my dance partner. My Jesus. 

Artist: Yongsung Kim

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