Confident Hope or Wishful Thinking?

It is my confident hope that spring will one day arrive in Chicago.

Sadly, it will not likely be within the next ten days.

I have faith that even though I am wearing a wool sweater and boots today and my back yard looks like this…

…that in a month or two it will look like this.

My hope is reasonable, because spring follows winter every year. Never fails.  There is no evidence of a thaw today, but I trust that it is coming.

Life, at least some aspects of it, on this earth can be like winter in Chicago; dreary, dormant and chilly.  Is it reasonable to hope for a thaw in a frozen relationship or the rebirth of a dormant dream or renewed health after disease?  Or is that just wishful thinking?

When I hope for something, I pray the words of Hebrews 11:1.  “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”  I pray something like this,

“Lord, I have absolutely no evidence for this hope.  None.  All I have is faith in you, my loving, all-powerful, gracious Father.  Will you grant me what I am hoping for?  It looks impossible to me, but nothing is impossible for you.”

He has answered more than one of those prayers.

Interestingly, what follows in the rest of Hebrews 11, also called the “Hall of Faith,” are commendations of the faithfulness of the “ancients,” like Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and Moses for starters.  However, they did not all receive all that they had hoped for on this earth.  Abraham, promised a nation and land, had only one son and a small plot of ground on which he buried his wife.  Moses took the nation of Israel to the edge of the Promised Land, but he himself did not enter it.

Hope and faith like the ancients must extend beyond this life and into the next.

Spring is a yearly demonstration of renewal, victorious life after death, and a powerful promise that one day everything will be permanently and eternally restored.

It is my confident hope that I will one day experience an eternal resurrection by faith in Jesus Christ, my risen Savior, and that I will also know the beginnings of the fulfillment of my hopes here on this earth.  And I will continue to pray in faith for all that I hope for. 

Is there an aspect of your life that you hope will change from “winter” to “spring?”

Has God answered your prayers of “Hebrews 11” faith?

“We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.  Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we await our adoptions as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved.”  Romans 8:22-23