The Longings Behind The Word Hope

My soul longs for your salvation; I hope in your word.  Psalm 119:81

The hope of a new year lies in expanse.  I’m sure that each of us are waiting for a different kind of year than what we experienced in 2020.  Perhaps something that is unresolved may be resolved in the next 12 months.

Someone is waiting to get well.  Someone else is waiting for a job or anxious to go back to work.  An anxious mom is waiting for inner peace.  A harassed spouse is waiting for intervention.  Someone very ill is waiting for a definitive diagnosis.  Someone is waiting for deliverance out of crushing circumstances.  Someone else is waiting for the ability to face the future after the death of a loved one from COVID.   All are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s promises.

I can never know if the salvation I seek is of the immediate kind, the kind that will come in the next twelve months, or is of a distant kind.  The prophets waited on a word and it stretched their eyes to distant horizons.  Abraham believed but he never got to see “the Word become flesh.”  Yet, the hope of it sustained him.

All my hope lies in God.   The knowledge of salvation, now or in the future, sustains and comforts me.  I do know this ~ I will live to see His Word fulfilled over the next fifty two weeks.  My hope is well placed because His promises are solid.  In whatever ways my faith is stretched, in whatever ways salvation waits on some distant horizon, God will give me grace to wait.  He will fill my heart with the Word of promise and with the hope that comes with things He speaks.  I don’t need to see it come true today to know joy.  I just need to know and believe the One who says that it will come true.

Creation groans for the revealing of the sons of God.  In the waiting, His Word continues to pulsate in my spirit with the kisses of promise.

Your Word simmers beneath the surface of my heart. Ever warm, I feel its comfort. Ever powerful, I feel its hope.  Amen