Hope.

Hope is a powerful thing.

A couple of weekends ago, I was in Calais doing some worship mission with an amazing group of people. Discussing the refugee crisis and the lengths that some of the people we’d met were going to, one of the team talked about the power of hope. These were a group of people who had heard that there was a possibility of a life better than the one they had known in a far-off land, and they were going to get there by any means necessary. They had pinned all their hope on this place that I call home, and after crossing the ocean in tiny boats, literally walking across the continent, being threatened by traffickers, giving up everything they own, it was the hope of what could be that was keeping them alive.

Hope is a powerful thing.

There are things that all of us are hoping for, some more significant than others, but still worth hoping for. Hope is often tied to things that, in reality, are out of reach, or out of our control. It can be something that propels us into action, something that keeps us afloat. But also, and often, it can be tied to disappointment. We have hoped for something and it hasn’t happened. We are still hoping for something, and are losing hope that it’s ever going to come. We grow tired, we feel fool. A friend once said to me, about a man who keeps promising her that he will be better: ‘he has made me hate hope.’

In these bleak and difficult days, I have been hoping for better. I have been hoping for different results, for humble leaders, for love of fellow man to win over love of money and power. I have been hoping that compassion would rush in and laws would change. But alas.

Amid all of that, I was reminding of this precious scripture.

‘…hope does not put us to shame’, Romans 5:5.

All these hopes are valid. They will not put us to shame. There is no shame in hoping. There is no shame in holding tightly to what might be, in believing that there are better days.

And why?

‘because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’, Romans 5:5.

I don’t know what’s coming or when. But I know God’s timing is perfect and I know you won’t be put to shame.

Hope is a powerful thing.