Pinning All Your Hopes

Ya know the past couple months have been a bit of a crazy ride, haven’t they?  Are you feeling some hopelessness?  Things are swirling around and you can’t quite get a handle on it? 

When I was a little girl, attending our local Catholic school near my home, my mom would occasionally let us buy those little cartons of milk they offered. Or sometimes the Scholastic Book Club would send those little catalogs and I’d want to pick out a

book.  BUT, in order to do either of those things, that meant I had to be responsible for bringing the money into school and hand it in.....NERVE WRACKING for sure!

So, my mom being my mom and she knowing me being me, she would take a little white envelope, put the coins needed into the envelope, seal it up, and then take a heavy-duty safety pin and pin that envelope to the lapel of my little plaid uniform.  That way the coins wouldn’t be lost and i’d get the end result I was hoping for.

Basically, I was pinning ALL MY HOPES in that little envelope because I certainly couldn't be trusted to get those coins there all on my own....I had a bit of a daydreaming mind. Still do... but I digress.

Today, maybe you’re pinning all your hopes in something or someone.  Hopes are funny things…..they can be small little hopes or great big hopes.  You can hope that you can get that stain out of the shirt you just spilled pizza sauce on.  But you can also hope that the price of gas or groceries comes down soon, or some type of medication is discovered for you with zero side effects.  Or hope that your job will still be there for you next week.

These kinds of hopes are more like wishes, kind of like a... well…...a MAYBE it'll happen, and definitely not a confident, expectant, concrete-can-depend-on type of hope.  BUT in the Bible, the word “hope” does have the idea of waiting patiently and anticipating an EXPECTED end.

WHO or what have you put your hopes in today?  Can I tell you that at some point every person will fail you, if they haven’t already? Things will break and fail you.  The bad NEWS is we live in a broken world filled with broken people and broken things.  We’ve all let each other down at some poin; that’s just how it is.  That stainstick will let us down.  The government will let us down, the person we love most will let us down at some point.  I mean, I’ve let my husband down plenty of times.  

And you learn after a while that pinning all your hopes on any one person or any one thing in this world will bring disappointment and sometimes even heartbreak.

BUT, can I also tell you that if you can pin ALL YOUR HOPES on the One who will NEVER fail you, that He will never let you down and will always make your hope be worthwhile.  And it’s not even dependent on YOUR ability to hope or YOUR ability to trust --the Bible says that “THIS hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who He has given us.” And also it says, “even when we are faithLESS, He is still faithFUL because He cannot deny Himself.”  He will remain faithful to us, to His word to us, and THAT faithfulness is the reason we CAN pin ALL our hopes --our anticipated expected end--on Jesus.  On His character, on His words to us, on His promises.

That kind of hope can see you through not only this current crisis you may be going through, but also the next one and the next one and the next one, because unfortunately they will come.  BUT as I said before, Jesus has come to give us LIFE and life more abundantly.  That kind of life includes HOPE as well.  

So, just like this little girl pinned all her hopes of a yummy chocolate milk or the newest little adventure in a book on a small little white envelope pinned to her uniform, I would encourage you to pin all your hopes today on Jesus.  He said you just have to come as a little child.  

“Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest…take MY yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and YE SHALL FIND REST UNTO YOUR SOULS” –Matt 11:28-29

"If you lack wisdom, you can ask God, who gives to all generously and without finding fault" --James 1:5-6