Our Hope
What gets us through this life? What gets us through the anxiety, sadness, peril, stumbling, stress, and all the unknowns that plague our thoughts? What gets us through the battles and hardships that seem to be our constant companions? Just when we think we have it worse than just about anyone we run across someone who has it worse even still. What gets them through their situations? I honestly believe that the answer is Jesus and his church. Paul says as much in Romans 8:35-39:
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Jesus’ love for us is so powerful that nothing in this world or our life circumstances can conquer it. We have the hope that this physical life isn’t the end, but the beginning of an eternity spent in perfect harmony with each other and all of creation in the presence of our Father and Savior. Paul says earlier in Romans 8:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Whatever we are going through here and now cannot be compared with the glory that’s coming! In other words, however bad it may seem now, the glory that we will experience will be far superior to the amount of suffering we will ever experience here. There is an eternal felicity that awaits us, so be encouraged in the here-and-now that you can endure the hardship, and you can walk the path that God has you on. That is hope! That is what helps us put one foot in front of the other when it seems so hard to do so. Jesus has given us himself and each other. Let’s lift each other up, and let’s be reminded of the grand truths of Scripture as we walk our path.
