Hope

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." Romans 15:13

"Now close your eyes and make a wish!" We've all done this as children (maybe even as adults) just before we sucked in a big breath and blew out our birthday candles. We took a moment of silence to visualize what it was we wanted and then exhaled as though our breath would bring our wish to life. To add more power to our wishes we'd cross our fingers on both hands, close our eyes tight until we saw stars and breathed so deep we almost passed out! All this would be followed by a huge round of applause and cheers from the party goers as though they were in agreement with our hopes and dreams.

What things did we wish for? Maybe we wished for a new bike, the latest Barbie doll, a new car, a child or a mended family? Whatever it was we didn't wish for things that we already had or the gifts we'd already opened. We wished for things that seemed outside our grasp; those possessions, ideals, opportunities, those life changes that would take a miracle to become a reality.

As the next year rolled around, however, many of our wishes remained unfulfilled. Mostly because they were not grounded in or vocalized to those that had the power to help fulfill those dreams or desires.

I believe that everyone has God-given desires placed in their hearts. They're more than just wishes for material things. They're passions that make us come to life as the people we know deep in our souls we were created to be. They're the longings, that when we seem so far from them, we ache at our very core. It's those desires that God wants to fulfill in us for His specific purposes. It's God's desire for us to become exactly who He intended us to be when He closed His eyes tightly, visualized who we were, every minute detail, sucked in a deep, deep breath and exhaled to give us life. All of this followed by His heart-felt applause as He placed us into our mothers' wombs.

There is so much hope for our futures If we place our trust, our hopes, our dreams our longings, our deepest desires in the One who created them in us at the very beginning. May we open ourselves to trust Him more, to fill us with hope so that we may share that hope with those in our lives who need Him.