Intro To The Series

STEP ONE: BREATHE

Take a deep, cleansing breath. Allow the air to fill your lungs and expand your body. Exhale and empty yourself into the room. Repeat three times - once for the one who Created you, once for the Incarnate One who walks beside you, and once for the Spirit whose life fills your being.

STEP TWO: DWELL IN WORD

Like a wispy cover of fog that hovers over green hills at dawn, hope can be elusive. That said, it is one of the most durable and most enduring parts of the human spirit. Hope is a paradox if there ever was one. It is as fragile as a delicate china teacup and can be as hard as tempered metal. Hope will push us beyond our limits to cross boundaries that we thought impenetrable. It allows us to hold on when everything else fails and fades away.

On the other hand, hope does not have a money-back guarantee. Sometimes, we find ourselves crushed when our hopes are misplaced. Life can disappoint. Expectations can quickly fall apart under the weight of reality. Even the strongest of persons can find themselves ill-prepared and lacking the essential equipment needed to meet the challenge at hand.

Hope is often confused with wishful thinking. It is not. You might wish for someone, perhaps yourself, to win a million dollars in the lottery. That would be nice. Think of all the things you could do with such a windfall. Wishing for such good fortune is like hunting for unicorns or four-leaf clovers; an amusing endeavor that will likely be unfruitful, especially if you never buy a lottery ticket!

Hope, however, is something a little different. Instead of luck, it operates in the realm of trust. We hope in the context of relationships with others and with God. Hope is built over time and connects with the track record that we have within these relationships. It can live and die, grow and shrink. There is an organic quality that resists our efforts to manufacture, augment, and control. However, we can nurture, cultivate, and harvest hope.

Hope operates in the present, based on the past, to open future possibilities. As such, it moves both within the time/space of our lives and yet also transcends it. In a way, hope blurs past, present, and future. When we hope, we are not constrained by how things were, are, or foregone conclusions.

There is an openness quality to hope that helps to create a space where things, even impossible things, can happen. It is especially true when we ground our hope in the steadfast love of God.

Over the twenty-eight days in this devotion series, we will explore different facets and stories of hope. We will approach the idea of hope grounded in the relationship that God has with each of us and the whole creation.

This devotional series will consist of quick stories (from my life/ministry and Jesus' life/ministry), prayers, inspirational images with questions to spark your imagination, haiku poems, and a few short stories. There will be something different each day. By focusing on hope for four weeks, we will gain greater insight into this elusive and essential resource for Christian living.

Weeks one and two of HOPE will highlight how hope helps us to hold on when life gets rough, and we find ourselves amid storms and scary stuff. Week three and four of HOPE will direct our focus towards hope's ability to move us forward. Through hope's door, we can walk into a different future.

As always, I write not as an 'expert' but as one who observes life, preaches and teaches about God's steadfast love, and is a 'work-in-progress.' I am grateful for your willingness to join me on this path of discovery and growth.

In Christ's Light,

Walt

STEP THREE:  RESPOND IN PRAYER

Gracious God, let me ground all my hope in you. Allow your steadfast love to be the foundation of my thoughts, dreams, and hope. Help me to trust in you as I hold on and move forward in life. Through Jesus Christ, amen.

Permission granted to share with friends and family. Copyrighted 2019. Walt Lichtenberger