Our Hope is in God

Surely everyone goes around like a mere phantom;
in vain they rush about, heaping up wealth
without knowing whose it will finally be.

But now, Lord, what do I look for?
My hope is in you.

Psalm 39: 6-7

“Midway along the journey of our life I woke to find myself in a dark wood, for I had wandered off from the straight path,” Dante writes near the beginning of The Divine Comedy. As we approach Lent’s midpoint, I find myself tempted to wander off, questioning whether my Lenten observances mean anything to God, if giving up sweets isn’t just a form of privilege or vanity.

In our lives, we are constantly questioning, looking towards the future rather than focusing on the present, indulging our incessant instinct to problem-solve. Where is our hope in that? How do we abandon our desire to control our fate to the wisdom of God and the saving grace of Jesus? Even Jesus knew he had to abandon His human will to God’s plan. The Gospels tell us of the agony in Gethsemane, and Jesus’s astonishing assertion to his apostles as they walked the road to Jerusalem, wherein lay salvation, that He would be handed over, scourged, condemned to death. And yet they walked on.

How are we to do the same? Escape the temptation to problem-solve our future and instead live fully in our present? We do so by realizing that our rushing around is mostly towards vanities, and that in our brief time on this Earth, our hope can only be in God, following His path in service, as the apostles and Jesus did on the road to Jerusalem. Our creature comforts may fail us, our problems along the road beset us and tempt us, but we know we have God to trust in, to turn to, and therein lies our hope.

-Kevin Yoder

Let us pray…

Dear Lord, Shape our lives to be ones of service and self-sacrifice, a life like yours, Lord. Fill us with your love and your strength, O God, so that we might serve our sisters and brothers and thus imitate your great gift of love. In you is our hope and salvation. Amen.