It’s an exhausting thing to hope.
I said this to myself on another particularly long day of work. I feel like I have been marked by this season of waiting. Pushing at walls to see if they’ll come crashing down. Sending out cold emails that don’t get responses. Hoping against the odds that maybe, just maybe, one day this business I just started to propel my filmmaking dreams and endeavors takes off. Looking at houses on Zillow and wishing we could afford one so we can have a place to settle down and start a family. Seeing everyone around my husband and I seemingly thriving while we are in this season of waiting with no end in sight.
There are no guarantees in this life of waiting - just hope.
Knowing that I don’t deserve the things I hope for, yet feeling hopeful anyway. Pleading and asking God over and over again for these desires. Talking God’s ear off on all the ways I could see my life going differently. Dissatisfied with where I am currently.
It is an exhausting thing to hope.
There are so many things to hope for that have no guarantees. I’m learning how to not put hope in my dreams, or certain things in my life resolving or becoming a reality. I hate to provide a cliche Christian answer, but truly we can only hope in Christ.
In this season of advent, I have identified with the theme of waiting. There were 400 years of silence between God and the Israelites before Christ the Savior came on the scene. They were familiar with waiting, hoping that God would be faithful to His promise.
The same place I find myself today. Maybe it hasn’t been 400 years of silence, but I am at a place where God seems silent. The temptation is to let my hope die and love grow cold. The human inclination to turn inward and away instead of pressing and leaning into God regardless of my fickle emotions.
It’s an exhausting thing to hope, sure.
I’m thankful that God doesn’t deal with me in regards to my lack of hope. He provides it through Jesus and what He has faithfully done - fulfilling His promise to come and die for my sin. I can put my feeble, frail, fractured hope in the fact that He truly hasn’t forgotten me in the midst of my unsatisfied desires. He has dealt with my biggest problem (me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me) - aka my sin, and He promises to return again to bring me to Himself.
When I’m exhausted of hoping, I can bring my tired hope to the One who will be faithful to renew it. Maybe not instantly, but I know this waiting and my delayed desires will be for some kind of purpose, even if only to draw me closer to Christ.
Hope delayed makes the heart sick. It’s an exhausting thing to hope.
But take courage that Christ sees you in your hopelessness. In your waiting. In your longing. He promises to be with you and walk with you through it. He promises to be the fulfillment of all your deepest longings.
And that must be enough.
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life
Proverbs 13:12
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