Living With Our Mini-Hopes

Living with our Mini-Hopes is a follow up to our latest posts on Mini-Hopes and True Hope. I hope no one has been discouraged by them. God’s mercy and grace are always covering every letter of His Word and His direction. He loves us completely and pours out His blessings, even when we get off track. The Lord is never hovering over us with a magnifying glass looking for every little flaw in us. He will never disown us, no matter how much we have left to learn. His only desire is that we have a heart to keep going forward with Him and that we will respond to His voice. One Word at a time.

That’s why today’s verse gives us real hope that strengthens us while we live with our mini-hopes.

** Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. ** Proverbs 13:12

Although the Lord wants us to live by True Hope, everyone of our mini-hopes is also important to Him. He understands that we are human and that we live in a tangible, enjoyable world. He just doesn’t want our worldly desires to fog our view of eternal ones.

Think of it this way…

If we are parents, we understand that our small children want toys that have little value. But we still buy them for them, don’t we? Because they make our children happy for a season. Then their sights are on to something new. We do not admonish them for wanting toys that do not last or go out of fashion. We allow them to enjoy them for a time, knowing that they will grow and mature and their priorities will change.

That is what the Lord does for us as well. He willingly and happily blesses us with the lovely things of this world so that our faith and trust in Him grows and our understanding of His love for us grows also. If we get a bit too involved in making ‘heaven on earth’ for ourselves, He will send gentle reminders to help lift our eyes to Him again.

The Lord understands that living here day to day is hard going. Storms of life like: finances, work issues, health, and relationships can all weigh us down. The Lord wants to give us a bit of respite from all of that. He tells us to ‘come apart and rest’. He wants us to have ways that relieve stress and frustration. We can rest by reading the Bible and by casting our cares on Him through prayer. But we can also have more tangible ways of taking a break. Some of us rest by shopping. 🙂 Some of us like sports. Others like to travel. And we all like to just go home. Home from work. Home from trouble. Home from the hospital. We want to go home and find a little bit of rest and comfort.

So, our mini-hopes are not terrible things. But neither should we be consumed with them.

I live in a comfortable apartment. I have a bed, a couch, a working kitchen, a balcony where I grow my plants and a sewing room where I can create and be in my own little world for awhile. And I have so much more than all of that. We all do. Having things or wanting things is not evil. We just have to keep our ‘things’ where they belong. Here. On earth. In our temporary life.

Our mini-hopes are the practice session to a perfect rest and a bountiful eternity in Jesus’ presence.

** Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. ** Hebrews 11:1

Today, we live happily with our temporal mini-hopes, but yearn for something so much better. We are all waiting for the time that our faith will be sight, and when all the beauty of Heaven will make our earthly treasures fade away. It is Hope deferred….True Hope that is worth waiting for.