Hope

What does that word really mean to me?

I just got off the phone with my dear friend, Steph, and now my brain is racing. She always makes me think in the best sort of ways.

Lots of things have been happening at the Dale House recently and I still love to hear about them and talk about them. Its sort of an addiction. I just love to hear what’s going on there and learn from my friends still there. I truly feel like God has created me to work with kids similar to those that live at the Dale House, and while my schooling is preparing me to do that, I am not currently in direct contact with those kids and it is hard. We are often put in places we don’t want to be, but God uses those times. Moses probably didn’t want to be in the desert. Paul probably didn’t want to be in prison. And Jonah probably didn’t want to be in the belly of a whale, but God used those times for his glory. He will use this time in my life as well.

Steph and I talked about all sorts of things. The weather, the Tar Heels, family, trips, the kids at the DHP, my school, and we talked about hope. We were talking about the kids at the Dale House and other kids like them. How do we share the hope of Jesus Christ with them in this hopeless world? In their hopeless situations? They literally have nothing. No family. No home. No good friends. No money. Nothing. Maybe one cardboard box of clothes and shampoo that they can call their own. The life looks pretty hopeless. They carry guns for protection or so they won’t be the “bitch” in their gang. They do meth everyday because it’s the only way the pain of being raped every weekend goes away.  They sell their bodies for sex so they have a place to sleep at night. Hope? It seems hard to tell these kids to have hope in Christ when they have nothing. But that’s just it…our hope shouldn’t be in those things and we shouldn’t equate Jesus with things.

Which brings me to my point. Where is MY hope? I have a home. I have a great family. I have lots of cardboard boxes of clothes. I have good friends. Where is MY hope? Is my hope in my home? Is my hope in my family? in my clothes? in my friends? It is easy for me to have hope in “Christ” when my life looks so promising, so is my hope really in Christ, or in those things? What if I lost all of my things/family/friends? What if my life switched places with these kids? Where would my hope be? Would I even have hope?

Do I truly believe Jesus is all-powerful and all good, all majestic? Or do I believe that because I have a nice life? What if my life all of a sudden turned awful?  Would I believe in that same Jesus? I hope I would. I really hope I would. Jesus is not the things he has given me. He is so much more than that.

I so badly want for these kids to have hope and to know Jesus. I want them to know the hope past a “feel good” life. But I want to know that hope too. I know it is there, but I want to trust it and REALLY know it. I want to have hope, not in things, not in the fact that my life is pretty middle class, not in the fact that I have people who love me, but in the fact that I have JESUS who loves me. I want that to be enough. I hope for a hope where Jesus is all I really need. 

One song says “My hope IS built on nothing else than Jesus my Emmanuel.” That is my hope that I could sing that honestly.

“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living!”

Ephesians 1:11