I like Greek.

I’m kind of a words person and ancient Greek has always fascinated me. I think what interests me is how much depth their words hold. Take for example compassion. In Greek that word is splagchnizomai which translates literally to “tearing of the guts.” Or “to be moved in the inward parts.” How cool is that????

Another interesting translation I found was of hope. I won’t bother with inserting a long word I know you won’t read, but it meant expectation. To anticipate or to welcome.

Which I think is a very different definition than the one it holds today. Hope often holds a lazy connotation. “I did literally everything I’m not supposed to do but I hope it’ll be okay.” Hope can feel like a childish belief that if you pray hard enough you’ll get that bike. Hope can feel illogical and, let’s be real—hope can feel unreasonable and stupid.

But hope isn’t unreasonable longing. It doesn’t even mean that. Hope is the expectation or the anticipation of God to follow through with what He has promised.

Over the past years, throughout the ups and downs of living life in a body that seems to hate me, I’ve nonetheless learned some important lessons about hope. And I’d like to share them with you.

1. I have hope, because God loves me and wants me to succeed.

I realized that God does everything out of His perfect love and omnipotence. Everything He does, He does to bring us closer to Him, and to give us a chance fulfill His plan for us. You would think that as a church brat/ pastor’s kid/ lobby lurker I’d have known this. But the reality is no one knows anything so don’t get cocky.

2. I have hope, because God is infinitely more intelligent than me. And He has a better plan than I do. 

I learned that God’s omnipotence is not confined by our constructed ideas of success.

We read in Isaiah 55: 8-9, “for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Now I don’t know if you guys quite caught on to that but he gives us an actual measurement of how superior He is to us. And just because I have a terrible sense of humor I just wanted to let you know that the distance from earth to technical space is 525,000 feet. Making God about 62 miles superior.

Psalms 147:5 says, “Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit.”

Job reminds in his book chapter 37 verse 16 that He is “perfect in knowledge.”

While we, humans, are compared to sheep. We laugh cause we think sheep are cute and dumb. But sheep legit smell bad and have terrible eyesight and sometimes die because they still haven’t figured out how to roll over when they fall down.  In eastern Turkey there was a recent accident where 1,499 sheep literally walked off a 50 foot cliff.

God is inconceivably more intelligent than we are. The things that we hold onto are so minuscule compared to the plans He has in mind for us. My idea of success has always been do good in school, get into any college you want, be a revolutionary youth. But me being unable to let go of those preconceived ideas has kept me from achieving God’s plans for my future and my heart.

3. I have hope because God has promised me that I will not fail.

Isaiah 43:2 reads, “when you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flame shall not consume you.”

In John 10:29 Jesus is talking about us as sheep being placed in his care, he says “My father… is greater than all; no one can snatch them (the sheepies) out of my Fathers hand.”

These verses are illustrating to us that God will not let us fail, and there is nothing that can snatch us from his protection. And that’s a pretty cool promise.

4. I have hope because Jesus’ death on the cross redeems me from myself.

I have made many choices that have jeopardized my safety, my relationships with my family and friends. I’ve made choices that separate me from the holiness of God. I’ve made choices that have hurt people and hurt myself and offset Gods plan for me. And I’m still making those choices all the time. And I will continue to screw things up for the rest of my life. Because I am a sinful being and a stupid being. And guess what, you are too.

By all logical means we should be completely separated from God. He is perfect and cannot bear evil. We see him in the Old Testament separating Himself from his people because of their constant mistakes and maliciousness. But He came up with a solution, Jesus.

This solution makes zero sense guys. Zero sense. I can’t even imagine sacrificing my cat to save my neighborhood.

But God has a love for us so deep He would give up His son for our sorry stinking butts. He would watch his boy be tortured and ridiculed and descend into hell, so that we could be friends with Him.

He did this so that every mistake that we’ve made, every sinful thing we will ever do, will not keep us from being with Him. I cannot fail if I cling to Jesus.

Now please, understand this; hope does not mean smooth sailing. I still have major anxiety about my future and I still spend lots of time alone. I’m still really sick and am still struggling with depression and cry a lot tbh.

But hope is about knowing the true character of God. Knowing He has the best in store for me. Knowing He loves me, knowing He is weeping with me when I’ve got the snots and heaves. Knowing He is laughing and loving my moments of joy and waving his arms around with me.

The reality is hope doesn’t exist without God. We won’t find it here on Earth no matter how far and wide we search.

The only way we find hope is to let go of our fear and our pride and lay at Gods feet with an open heart.

It’s not easy. But wow is it worth it.

chronic illness faith god hope peace surrender