I like challenges, no really I do.
Like trying something new {I am still working on a quilt from last year and still challenged by the elusive straight stitch}, go shopping with my mother {she is a professional, I go for necessities, it’s usually a challenge to keep us with her}, write about what moves me {I prefer to write about non-personal topics, which keep me safe from critics}.
Nonetheless, these challenges engage me and step me out of my very comfortable box. The box may be safe, but it is not always good for me. Trials allow me to stretch my faith especially when I need a Divine encounter for the task at hand, like completing this quilt since I sew at a glacial pace.
What I recently realized is even though I am exercising my faith, I was not producing a whole lot of hope with these faith stretches.
No big deal, I’m just keeping the options open and allowing God to do what He is going to do and I will be surrendered to His perfect plan. Good right? A+ on that test!
{small voice in my head: Umm, no – it is not right.}
Ever want to smack the small voice in your head?
This four letter word “hope” is going to stalk me until I get it right, so I have decided to capture it instead.
I do not know what this kind of hope looks like. Right now I have a visual of it being one of those big warm hugs Olaf does. Or that adorable puppy being reunited with his Clydesdale friend in that Super Bowl commercial…
I am certain though, it looks much different than that in the throes. I imagine it looks more like Hannah’s prayer to God for a child and the priest, Eli mistook her for being intoxicated. Still Hannah prayed hope-filled prayers and she was blessed because of them.
Coincidentally, this hope challenge comes at the perfect time. Last week I began an audacious Cereal Drive in my area for a program at the Food Bank. My faith didn’t even flinch at the number – 6000 boxes needed. I know God performs miracles every day and what He does with this Cereal Drive will be His will.
What trips me up is having hope this can be done in two weeks led by little me. Dare I hold my breath and believe 6000 boxes of cereal can be collected in 14 days? That’s almost 500 boxes a day! Whoa, reality check – that is A LOT of boxes and I have a very small circle of friends! However, each time I thought about lowering the goal number to an attainable number I could do, the verse in Matthew 19:26 buzzed in my brain like a neon sign “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
So my challenge is hoping 6000 boxes will be collected during this 2-week cereal drive. The challenge touches something deeper inside me that pushes me past the fear to have hope in helping them. Without this cereal, kids in my area may have nothing to eat for the week and that just crushes me. So as fearful as it for me who does not usually take on anything I cannot excel in – when it came down to it, it was still easier for me to say yes to hoping, than no I will not try to help these children.
So I’m praying like Hannah, daring to have her hope.
How about you? Will you take this dare with me as well? What have you been holding back having hope in? Let us be bold and surrender the fear of hope and stand steadfast in our faith to believe.
Lamentations 3:24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”
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