Do you know what the most dangerous feeling is?
The emotion that can get you into the hardest situation...
The emotion that can open up a whole world of trouble....
The emotion that can destroy fortified walls that are years thick...
Hope.
We are born with innate hope and expectation. We come into this world with a hopeful cry, searching for somebody who is expecting us and waiting for us. We hope things for ourselves and we hope things for others. When days are hard we hope for resolutions and brighter tomorrows. We cling to hope of a brighter future to get us through darker times.
The tricky part is when the thing we have been hoping for does not happen.
The trickier part is when we hope for that thing again, and it does not happen again.
And again. And maybe even again.
At some point we maybe feel like we are "Losing hope."
Honestly, how many times should we continue to allow hope to rise up in our heart only to have it smashed down by life's fist? At what point are we living out the definition of insanity? "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," (Proverbs 13:12) and heartsickness hurts.
So, we shut down and quit reaching out and begin to treat our sick heart with pills of settling and bitterness instead of allowing it to draw from the medicine of hope that has failed it countless times. The pain of having our hopeful heart crushed is so fresh and so raw that we simply cannot allow it to happen again.
In fact, I propose that "losing hope" is not an accurate description of this experience: we do not actually "lose" something, as in inadvertently misplace it and find ourselves unable to find it. Instead, we choose to tuck it away behind a big stone wall so it cannot open us up to hurt again. Then, each time a disappointment or heartbreak occurs, we add another big rock to that wall to remind our "hope" that it is not welcome anymore.
Hope is dangerous because allowing ourselves to experience it means risking the fall again.
Allowing that hope to show, allowing that hope to reappear and stir our hearts again means opening the door to our true selves wide enough for hurt to come back into our life. However, it also means that something good could come back in also. Hope is necessary for each of us, as created beings, to remind us that there is a beautiful and good and lovely future. Hope anchors our soul, firmly and securely. The chain from that anchor stretches straight back to its heavily bolted attachment to the throne of God (Hebrews 6:19).
Hope in our future with Him is unquestionable. It is assured. It is a certainty. The hope that makes our heart sick and lets us down is the one we have tied expectations to. Expectations of other people are just moments of resentment waiting to happen. They hurt us because people are....people. If our hope is directed toward God, it will not hurt us. If our hope is place in the hands of other jerks like ourselves (and I mean all lovely humans!) then we will be using our rocks of disappointment and hurt to build stone walls hundreds of feet high. The walls might keep out the hurt, but they will also keep out the joy and beauty and connection.
Father God,
Let me put my hope in You. Let my anchor be firmly attached to Your throne. Break the chains I have allowed to anchor into other peopled that they might be free of my expectations and I will be free of bitterness and resentment that comes when I don't get what I want, hope or expect. Allow me to put all of my trust and hope in You and Your promises so that my hope can arise and move others to be who You want them to be, and I can be accepting of the beauty they offer me: not dependent on out for my joy.
Amen.
