When you get down to it, everybody wants the same thing, Hope. We don’t always consciously see it that way because, we are most fixated on where that hope is placed, rather than the hope it represents in our heart. For most people, that hope is placed in things that we accomplish or acquire. Which can run the spectrum of everything from money, career, home, relationships, family, and possessions. It can be very easy to cling to this alleged hope as long as we don't have all these things. It can always seem just beyond our grasp, in something more. For example, in the case of a single person, it can manifest in the idea of, if only I had a romantic relationship. We find a relationship, and it turns into, if only I were married. We get married, and it turns into, if only I had children. We have children, and it turns into, if only we had a nice house and car to complete our home. We can keep going and going on and on until there are no more dreams to fulfill, and the bubble bursts with the realization that fulfilled dreams do not necessarily mean fulfilled hope. We can see many things occur at this point. We might blame all the people we once looked to for hope via impatience, unkindness, rudeness, and criticism. Or we can abandon those same people and try it all again with somebody else. Or we can go back to a time before the bubble burst via the classic mid life crisis. Or we can try with an entirely new path.
We sometimes see an exaggerated sense of this in celebrities. For they have acquired and achieved nearly everything their hearts have desired. Yet, they still manage to crash and burn. While this perplexes many who put all their hope in everything that they have, but it stands as a testament that all we achieve and acquire will not necessarily fulfill hope.
Not that what we put our hope in is as universal as all that. Just look at the phenomenon of hoarding. It may look like a big pile of junk to most, but to them it is their hope. It does not matter how much you point out that it is just junk, for as long as it represents "hope" in their hearts, they will not let it go easily. When you get down to it, all the junk is just the symptom; the real problem lies in the heart. Until healing is brought to their hearts, their behavior will not change no matter how much we criticize them.
Even as believers who should know where true hope lies, often get caught up in these traps of seeking the created rather than the creator for our hope. All because of the simple fact that the created is more tangible, even if the results are not. Consider this as you ponder these passages on hope.
Psalm 25, 33, 37, 42, 62, 71, 130
Proverbs 10:28; 11:7, 23; 13:12; 19:18
Matthew 12:16-21
Hebrews 6:13-20
1 Peter 1:13-25
1 John 3:1-3
