Struggling Well With Life

Chuck has been pretty thematic in recent days with worship in the venues, and the theme he seems to be pounding is “hope”. Hope is another one of those great words, and broad concepts that is tough sometimes to wrap your mind around. A few weeks back I was in Cuba, which was an eye opener on many levels. Even though in my many years on this earth I have witnessed third world living in countries all over the globe, Cuba hit me hard. There are few reasons for hope there. As we toured some of the hurricane damaged areas, it broke my heart to see what very little they had to start with - was leveled, or simply gone. What does hope look like for them? And then back here at home, even in spite of this economic shift of recent days, we have so much in comparison to how the rest of the world lives. And we know, that that does not fill us, or bring us hope. There are so many stories of folks who are in desperate need of hope. Families are barely hanging on, or falling apart, hurt and disappointment are cycles hard to break from, wounds in relationships, marriages that look good from an outsider’s perspective but are private hells, all kinds of hurt, and this is not in the world, but right here at church. Hope! We need it. The Scriptures remind us that “our help come from the Lord”, and that Jesus is our great Hope. I pray today that the Holy Spirit would do a work in us, in me, to remind us that no matter where we are in this life we are living that He alone is our hope. O friend, turn to Him, look to Him.  Jimmy reminded us last weekend “If we draw near to God, He will draw near to us”.