Hope -- The Confident Expectation of Good

Just came back from driving with hubby where we had a really great conversation about hope -- the confident expectation of good.

Trying to make the meditation of my heart be on that... because after so many years of being ill and seeing child ill, it's hard to dream again.

Jesus told us to be careful how we hear. We have to be so careful what waters the soil of our hearts. Faith is one thing but faith has to be planted in good ground. A heart that believes the gospel thoroughly yet is pessimistic at the core...makes certain hearts really unable to conceive of answers to their prayers or even good things happening to them.

St Paul says we must not be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. This means we double-minded must not only purify our hearts from our own personal melancholic pessimistic leanings, but we must purify it from the world's ways, expectations, fears, basic fundamental beliefs.

The words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts must be hopeful, faithful, loving, truthful because Faith works best in a hopeful heart and with a mind that has been renewed and made non-comformable to the world. By "world" I mean the pundits and the personal doctors who keep telling you you're going to die because of such and such, or the TV news anchor folks who try to make you afraid of everything and who feed us with fear.

This is an interesting time in our lives. On the one hand, it sometimes feels as if I'm fighting for my life. So I have to force myself to believe I'll still be alive next year. (And I so love Onion and Constant Tower that I'd like to see them published.) I also want to see younger son's healing manifest. I know Jesus died to heal us and my job is to fight to keep the victory of the gospel -- not to let the illness win. But on the other hand, now that hubby is suddenly unemployed these six months (after 13 years) --and the house is just in such dire need of fixing because younger son has kicked in walls and the bathroom is leaking terribly-- this is really a time to learn to hope. It's like what James Joyce says: "I'm almosting it."

I can almost grasp the feeling that this really is a new time in our life for a big deep change. We could leave the house, sell it for a pittance, sell it for a lot, let the bank take it. (Younger son would be free of congestion definitely if he gets out of this house.) We could leave town, stay in town but move to another house or apt, move back to California where we have family instead of living so solitarily because of the reclusivity caused by son's and my illness. Hubby could start an entirely different job. There is so much of a possibility. No money, though. And no real clear guidance. So I believe something good is coming. At least I can almost kinda believe something good is coming.

Anyways, am really trying to catch whatever thoughts float past my mind. I just have to have a heart that believes good thing will happen. I have faith but I don't have that joyful hope. Asking God to change my heart. God, help me please.


"I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.'

And he replied, 'Go into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way!'

So I went forth and finding the Hand of God
Trod gladly into the night
He led me towards the hills
And the breaking of day in the lone east.

So heart be still!
What need our human life to know
If God hath comprehension?

In all the dizzy strife of things
Both high and low,
God hideth his intention.

.. Minnie Louise Haskins (1875-1957), "The Desert" (c. 1908) Also known as The Gate of The Year

This is a part of a post I made a couple of days ago. I'm reprinting it here because it's so on my mind.


Thought about the Bible verse about Elijah
  1 Kings 17:9 Arise, get thee to Zarephath, which belongeth to Zidon, and dwell there: behold, I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee.  


And Andrew Wommack was doing a sermon on this verse:


1 Kings 17:4 "It shall be that you will drink of the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to provide for you there."

What I like about this story is that the widow woman didn't know she had been commanded to feed the prophet. As far as she knew she was preparing to die. Yet the command was already in her soul and whether she knew it or not God had set up her soul to feed this prophet. The prophet had his job to do. As Andrew Wommack said in his sermon, God has provided a "there." And in the first instance with the ravens, Elijah had to go THERE. In the second instance, Elijah not only had to go "there" but he had to ask a woman who considered herself at the end of her rope to help him. In both instances the feeders did something not really typical of them. Maybe the lady was very kind-hearted and would've helped him anyway, but as a mom a part of me thinks that she would be loathed to even part a bit of food to the prophet that would've helped her son. Anyway, whatever the obstacle, God's command was done.

Hubby's lack of a job is an interesting time right now. Where is our "there"? Is it a job nearby? Is it far-off? Where should we go? So many obstacles, but so many possibilities? We just have to hear what God has commanded us to do.