Two Kinds Of Hope

I feel confident to say that everyone of us have experienced hoping for something only to find ourselves disappointed at the results.  As we go through life we learn two things about hope:  we don’t always get what we hope for, and when we do, we are often disappointed because the thing hoped for didn’t do for us what we expected it to do.

When dealing with the disenchantment of hope we can identify with King Solomon.  He was a man that could have everything the world could offer; yet he found it all unsatisfying.  He had material wealth but it didn’t satisfy.  He was popular but that didn’t satisfy either.  He experienced the finest wines and the most exotic foods but there was no lasting satisfaction.  He looked for happiness in sex with 700 wives and 300 concubines. (One wonders how he had time for anything else!)  but that brought no deep and lasting satisfaction either.  He wrote in Ecclesiastes 1:14, “I observed everything going on under the sun, and really, it’s all meaningless—like chasing the wind.”  He could not find lasting fulfillment or purpose in anything the world had to offer him.  Its pleasures were for a moment and then vanished, leaving him to chase something else to make him happy.  Have you ever felt like Solomon,  running after fulfillment, breathless in the exhausted pursuit?

There are two kinds of hope that we can attain; one type of hope comes from the world and another comes from faith in God.  The first hope is not a bad hope.  We all joy when we get that house or that dream job.  We all appreciate when a bad situation changes for the good.  Even so, the above is temporary.  They involve hope that is fleeting; here one day and gone the next.

The hope that God Himself gives us is lasting in spite of any of the above.  The hope that God gives involves His promises that are steadfast and unchanging no matter the situations of our lives.  His loves is unchanging.  His peace is unchanging.  His joy is unchanging.  His hope is unchanging, enduring through anything, holding us up in everything.

The world’s hope is sometimes satisfying and something not.  God’s hope is steadfast at all times; promising a peace and joy that nothing of the world can ever take away.