Why Hope?

I Showed a Picture of a boy I met in an Orphanage.

This picture was taken early this year at an orphanage in Guatemala. There were 30-40 kids there all hungry for love and attention. We had gone there to give them what they were hungry for. The kids surrounded us almost as soon as we got off the bus. The boy in the pictures name is Miguel – I think.

Miguel appeared to be no different from the others. He ate the same beans & rice. He played on the same grassless playground and slept under the same tin roof as the other kids. But though he appeared to be the same, there was something different about him. All you had to do was ask him. Miguel had been adopted. Even though nothing has changed – everything has changed.

Every time a car pulls into the driveway, he wonders is it them? Every time he hears there is an overseas call – he listens closely. Any day now his father will appear. He promised he would be back. He came once to claim him and he will come again to take him home. Till then, Miguel lives with a heart headed home.

Shouldn’t we all? Miguel’s situation is just like ours. Our Father also paid us a visit. We too have been chosen – adopted. Soon, He is coming again to get us and we will go home. Until then, we still live with hard bunks and tin plates. But don’t forget, you have a different, a better, future. You have a HOPE!

Hope is necessary to the human spirit as oxygen is to the physical body. When we lose all hope, we are overcome with feelings of senselessness, purposelessness, and despair. Lack of hope can destroy our very lives.

Chuck Swindoll wrote

We can live several weeks without food, days without water, and only minutes without oxygen, but without hope – forget it.

What do we do if we forget? Miguel could look at the pictures, and letters they sent. He could grab one of the gifts they left him when they were there the first time. What about us? What did our Father give us?

2 Corinthians 5:5 (NLT)

God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.

2 Corinthians 5:5 (Message)

The Spirit of God whets our appetite by giving us a taste of what’s ahead. He puts a little of heaven in our hearts so that we’ll never settle for less.

2 Corinthians 1:22 New Living Translation (NLT)

And he has identified us as his own by placing the Holy Spirit in our hearts as the first installment of everything he will give us.

New Life Version (NLV)

He has put His mark on us to show we belong to Him. His Spirit is in our hearts to prove this.

I am sure at times it was hard for Miguel. Maybe even seeing me was hard at first or when we left. If he gets sick – he longs for a mom to pamper him. When he gets to play with that one special toy that they all have to share – he can’t wait until he has his own.

Romans 8:23 (NLT)

And even we Christians, although we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, also groan to be released from pain and suffering. We, too, wait anxiously for that day when God will give us our full rights as his children,[1] including the new bodies he has promised us.

But the blessings and burdens in life, the good times and struggles, are all like an alarm clock that wakes us out of the present. Every day we aren’t home means we are one day closer to our Father coming to get us.

That’s HOPE!

We have the deposit. He marked us as His own – just look at it.

This isn’t the kind of Hope that depends on fate or luck. We are not day dreaming of getting a free vacation to Hawaii or even taking a bath in Calgon and getting carried away. It’s more than a charming prince coming on a white horse to rescue us.

This is a real hope. Because we Hope in something that we can depend on. We Hope in a person that we know we can absolutely trust to do what He promised. He not only came to rescue us from sin, but he placed His Holy Spirit within.

Colossians 1:27

… Christ in you, the hope of glory.

He also gave us His WORD to GIVE US HOPE.

Romans 15:4

For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope.