So I have been thinking about HOPE recently. There are days that can be quite discouraging. I get asked all the time, "how do you manage?" with 5 kids, homeschooling some of them, carpooling and volunteering at the school for the one I'm not homeschooling, and working my job with Cru. The answer I have sometimes given? "Not very well." And it's true.
On my own, I stink at all of my jobs, especially being a mom. I look at other moms and their kids, and they seem to have it all together. But then someone will make a comment about how my kids never misbehave or how they are so good. I smile and think about the time at Beau Jeau's in Colorado when my kids were absolutely losing it while the other family with 5 kids had perfectly behaved "angels." And then I realize that all those other families whose kids look like they have it all together really don't have it all together.
It's only by God's grace that any of us have part of it together anyway. And that give me HOPE:
- I am hopeful that God is doing a good work in me in spite of my own selfishness and sinfulness.
- I am hopeful that God is working in that child who isn't responding the way I had imagined - but instead in whom I see some of my own faults and failures.
- I am hopeful that God can use a broken vessel like me to further His kingdom.
- I am hopeful that God's mercies are new every morning.
- I am hopeful that God can mend broken relationships.
- I am hopeful that there is more than just this life here on earth.
- I am hopeful that He is coming back one day.
- I am hopeful that when He does come back, He will make me into a new creation and I will no longer struggle with the same old sins, over and over again.
- I am hopeful that I will one day see Him face to face.
"For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it." Romans 8:24 - 25 NASB
