{"id":5677,"date":"2019-03-20T08:49:12","date_gmt":"2019-03-19T22:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=5677"},"modified":"2019-03-20T21:33:13","modified_gmt":"2019-03-20T11:33:13","slug":"searching-for-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/searching-for-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Searching for Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Searching for Hope<\/strong><\/p>\n

by<\/em>\u00a0Fr Anthony Messeh<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Reposted from\u00a0http:\/\/www.franthony.com\/blog\/searching-for-hope<\/a><\/p>\n

Fr Anthony Messeh is an American Coptic Orthodox Christian living in Arlington, VA. The aim of his blog is to spread the message of a real, relevant and rewarding God.<\/em><\/p>\n

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HOPE.\u00a0 What is it?\u00a0 Where do I find it?\u00a0 How do I get it?\u00a0 And if I do get it, how do I keep it?\u00a0 Why does THAT <\/em>guy seem to have so much of it and I have so little of it?\u00a0 Is there really such a thing as hope in my situation?<\/p>\n

Of course we all know the \u201cright\u201d answers to these questions.\u00a0 It\u2019s easy to rattle off some Bible verses and spew out a few stories and then declare \u201cso just hope in God.\u201d\u00a0 But do we really believe that?\u00a0 Do you really believe that?<\/p>\n

The honest answer for me?\u00a0 Yes and no.\u00a0 At times, yes.\u00a0 And at other times, no.\u00a0 There are those times when life seems to be going well \u2013 not perfect, but at least moving in the right direction.\u00a0 Economy is up, career is progressing, and relationships are stable.\u00a0 Life is good.\u00a0 At times like that, it\u2019s easy to talk about hope and tell others about hope as well.\u00a0 Hope is ours.<\/p>\n

But those \u201cgood\u201d times seem to occur much less frequently than the \u201cbad\u201d times don\u2019t they?\u00a0 The economy seems to be down more than it\u2019s up.\u00a0 My career has more bumps than I expected.\u00a0 And my relationships (or lack thereof) seem to be a constant source of stress and anxiety in my life.\u00a0 Where\u2019s hope then?<\/p>\n

Please don\u2019t give me (or yourself) the \u201cright\u201d answer that we learned back in Sunday school.\u00a0 Don\u2019t just tell me that we have to trust and believe and everything will be ok.\u00a0 Do you even believe that?\u00a0 I will be honest and say that I struggle with that at times.<\/p>\n

Where is hope when you are standing at a grave with a mother who just buried her son?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Where is hope when you see a family with no money in their account, bills are piled up to the ceiling and then you hear that the dad just got laid off?<\/em><\/p>\n

Where is hope when you\u2019re lonely and God knows you\u2019re lonely but doesn\u2019t seem to be doing anything about it?<\/em><\/p>\n

In the past, I\u2019ve written about some of more abstracts element of hope, so today I want to focus on the practical components.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to DEFINE hope; I want to DESCRIBE it.\u00a0 Hope is too big to be defined, but it can be described \u2013 in both words and pictures.<\/p>\n

1. Hope is a choice<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The level of hope you experience in life is totally and completely up to you.\u00a0 No one and no circumstances can affect that.\u00a0 Let me draw you a picture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"train\"Imagine a parallel set of train tracks that extends as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 Those tracks represent the experiences that we all go through in life \u2013 one is the painful experiences and the other is the joyful experiences.\u00a0 Every day we experience some pain and some joy as we walk down the road of life.<\/p>\n

Now imagine looking out toward the horizon \u2013 look out as far as your eye can see.\u00a0 What will happen?\u00a0 What will you see?\u00a0 Can you still see two separate tracks?\u00a0 NOPE.\u00a0 You\u2019ll only be able to see one.\u00a0 The two tracks appear to become one track only.<\/p>\n

That is hope.\u00a0 Hope is not looking down, but looking ahead.\u00a0 If you look down at either one of those two tracks, you\u2019ll be in trouble.\u00a0 Focusing on the joyful track only will lead to denying reality.\u00a0 Focusing on the painful track only will lead to depression. \u00a0We don\u2019t need to look down; we need to look ahead.\u00a0 That is hope.<\/p>\n

Hope says that no matter what happens today, God is working all things together for good to those who love Him.\u00a0 Hope says that even though today you may see \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d, there will come a day where you will see that BOTH of those tracks were needed to get you to where God wants you to be.<\/p>\n

That is hope \u2013 not that everything is ok, but that God is working all things in order to make it ok one day.\u00a0 That is why I say that hope is a choice.\u00a0 No one can force you to look up and by the same token, no one can stop you from doing so either.<\/p>\n

2. Hope is a person<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a beautiful prayer we say in the Orthodox church and we use it just before we read from the gospel.\u00a0 The prayer says: \u201cfor You are the life of us all, the salvation of us all, the HOPE OF US ALL, the healing of us all and the resurrection of us all.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

God is our hope.\u00a0 We don\u2019t hope in the miracles of God or the grace of God or the mercies of God.\u00a0 WE HOPE IN GOD HIMSELF.<\/p>\n

Said another way, hope is not based on the presence of your circumstances; hope is based on the presence of your God.\u00a0 Don\u2019t tell me how bad your situation is; tell me whether or not God is in it with you or not.\u00a0 <\/strong>If He is, there\u2019s hope.\u00a0 If He\u2019s not, there\u2019s no hope.\u00a0 Simple.<\/p>\n

Let me draw you another picture.\u00a0 Imagine sitting in a pit \u2013 with the mud and mire all around \u2013 and then seeing a hand reaching down from above.\u00a0 That hand of is the Hand of God reaching down to rescue you and lift you up.<\/p>\n

Now what\u2019s hope?\u00a0 Hope is how tightly you grasp that hand.\u00a0 Some choose to hold lightly and therefore have little hope.\u00a0 Some cling with all their might and therefore have a lot more hope.\u00a0 The force and desperation and urgency with which you cling to that Hand \u2013 that\u2019s hope.\u00a0 And again, no one can affect that except you.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, my soul, are you downcast?\u00a0 Why so disturbed within me?\u00a0 Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.\u201d\u00a0 Psalm 42:5<\/em><\/p>\n

They say that hope is the oxygen of the soul.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t agree more.\u00a0 Even though we don\u2019t necessarily know what it is, we all know we need it.\u00a0 And now we know that it\u2019s in our control to go get it.<\/p>\n

Hurt is inevitable, but despair is optional.\u00a0 We cannot avoid hurt, but we can avoid hope.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

See more from Fr Anthony Messeh at\u00a0http:\/\/www.franthony.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Searching for Hope by\u00a0Fr Anthony Messeh Reposted from\u00a0http:\/\/www.franthony.com\/blog\/searching-for-hope Fr Anthony Messeh is an American Coptic Orthodox Christian living in Arlington, VA. The aim of his blog is to spread the message of a real, relevant and rewarding God. HOPE.\u00a0 What is it?\u00a0 Where do I find it?\u00a0 How do I get it?\u00a0 And if I … Continue reading “Searching for Hope”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[91,92,93],"class_list":["post-5677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-depressed","tag-discouragement","tag-hope"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5679,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5677\/revisions\/5679"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}