Who Needs Hope When You Have Got a Plan?

Got a text early this morning from someone very dear to me.

Today marks the 1 year anniversary of a horrific loss in their life....

Heart-wrenching. Mind-blowing. A punch to the gut kind of loss.

This person had read a devotion for today, and of all topics for today, it spoke of ~hope~.

Now we know our hope is firmly rooted and established in the person of Jesus Christ.
He is the author and perfecter of our faith.

Hope is found in Him.
It is impossible without Him.

Yet we plan lives for ourselves that usually require little to no hope.

Right?

It all sounds good on paper that Jesus is my hope until your plans fall apart and the screen that is playing your life goes blank.

Where is that hope then?

Well....let's digest this for just a bit.

When our lives are going exactly according to our plan how does hope fit into that equation?

It doesn't.

Smooth sailing doesn't hope for much.  It doesn't have to.

I had a plan.

Get a college degree.
Marry the man of my dreams.
Teach school.
Have babies.
Be a wife and mother.
Follow Jesus the rest of my days.

Sound like yours?

What was not in my plan was needing hope on a daily basis the way I do.

The way my plan would work wouldn't really require hope.

Here are some of the definitions of biblical hope:  expectation, thing that I long for, to anticipate, confidence, faith.

Somehow we look back on our plans....before life ran off of the rails....before the things happened in your life that jilted your faith and lit your anger fuse towards God...and we compare as if somehow those days were hope-filled and the here and now is less so~ even hopeless.

Can you stop for a moment and look at it the opposite way?

Hope is only the glorious gift that IT IS when your plan is disrupted.

When the brakes squeal and the smoke clears and you look around and your plans are stalled out....blessed hope actually has a chance to blossom.

Hopeless living left along with your plan.

Jesus brings hope to those that desperately need it.

And we all do....

So if you feel hopeless today, chances are you have it backwards.

You thought your plan brought you hope.

It didn't.

Only Jesus can do that.

The gift of hope comes to those that fall to their knees and hold ashes in their hands of what they thought would be....

Difficult moments create the needed space for hope.

Loading my 15 year old girl on a bus in a wheelchair was not my plan.
No parent dreams of changing a teenage girl's diaper or feeding her with a tube in her tummy.

That wasn't my plan.

But neither was hope.

Salvation came to me as a 9 year old little girl.  I confessed my need for a Savior.
Hope came to me on June 11, 2002 as a 24 year old woman.

My plan was disrupted.
His plan was falling perfectly into place.

I will end this post with fitting scriptures that include the word ~hope~.

You will notice that it usually shares space in God's Word with sorrow.

After all....that is where HOPE is needed the most.

Psalm 42:5
Why am I discouraged?
Why so sad?
I will put my hope in God!
I will praise him again-
my Savior and my God!

Psalm 40:11-12
LORD. don't hold back your tender mercies from me.
My only hope is in your unfailing love and faithfulness.
For troubles surround me-
too many to count!
They pile up so high
I can't see my way out.
They are more numerous than the hairs on my head.
I have lost all my courage.

Hebrews 10:23
Without wavering, let us hold tightly to the hope we say we have,
for God can be trusted to keep his promise.