Hope is a Good Thing

Mom called today and I can't seem to shake our conversation. Honestly, I think it caught me at the right time.

She told me about someone walking through something so difficult I can't even imagine. It's the kind of thing that makes you realize how little control we actually have over some parts of life.

What stuck with me, though, was the way this person was walking through it. There was still faith. There was still prayer. There was still hope.

My mom and I talked about it for a while. She was so encouraging, and we kept coming back to the same conclusion: hope is a good thing.

Not because having hope means you know how something is going to turn out. We don't. Most times we pray and pray and still don't know what God is going to do. But we get to hope anyway. Which is a blessing, really.

Tonight, I spent time praying out loud.

I prayed for the situation. I prayed for the people involved. And then I just kept talking.

At some point I started crying, and I think that's when it stopped feeling like I was "saying a prayer" and started feeling like I was talking to God.

Like actually talking to Him.

I told Him what I was thinking and what I was scared of. I asked questions. I probably rambled. I talked to Him the same way I would talk to a friend. I felt like He wanted to hear me.

And that was kind of crazy to think about. God has infinitely more power than I do, and yet I still felt worth His time. I didn't need to have anything important to say. I didn't need to understand what I was feeling before I brought it to Him.

I could just give it to Him.

I think that's one of the greatest comforts of knowing Jesus. I've known Him for a long time, and still, every once in a while, I have a moment where something I've known for years feels new again.

Last year, one of my memory verses was Proverbs 3:5–6, which starts with, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding..." I've repeated that verse more times than I can count, but tonight, I think I understood it a little differently.

There are things on Earth that I will never understand. There are prayers I won't know the answer to and situations I would never be able to carry on my own. And I think that's part of why I can't imagine my life without Jesus.

I don't know how I would do it.

I think this is also where the question comes up: if God is good, why do bad things happen to good people? I don't have an answer that can make every painful thing make sense, and I don't think I'm supposed to. My faith has never promised me a life where nothing hurts. If anything, Jesus is the reason I know suffering isn't evidence that God has left. He stepped into suffering Himself. I don't trust God because I believe He will keep every bad thing from happening to me or the people I love. I trust Him because I believe He is still good when I don't understand, still present when life hurts, and still able to bring hope into places where I can't see any on my own.

Knowing Him doesn't mean I never hurt or worry or question things. It means I have somewhere to put all of it. I have someone to talk to when I don't have the words, someone to trust when nothing makes sense, and hope when there isn't an obvious reason to have it.

And none of that is something I've earned.

That's just who He is.