Note: On Tuesdays and some Sundays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Maybe it starts in childhood.
We hope for a pony. We get a tricycle.
We hope for a particular doll or bat or tablet or game subscription. The one we get is fine… but it’s not exactly the one we had our heart set on. And so we become more specific, more defined in what we want in gifts or people. We set up our wish list on Amazon and our non-negotiables on CatholicMatch or elsewhere because we think in the tangible, the specific. We hope for what we have seen, what we know will make us happy. We pray for that too: Give me that promotion. Provide the money for that new house. Bring me a spouse. Often, we had these things once, and they were lost along the way. Other times, we pray for them because we’ve seen how happy they make others, and surely they will do the same for us. We waste time and hope pining for the things we know or once knew, things that everyone else except us seems to have. After all, we know best what we need.
Paul advises us today in Romans 8 to develop the faith to have hope, for one necessarily follows the other for Christians. Our greatest hope, that of eternal life, comes through our belief in the Resurrection and the promise that it is available to us as well. What does heaven look like? Our brains cannot begin to imagine, most likely. And so we hope to be worthy of it, as we work and wait, confident of the Lord’s presence here and His constant love for us.
Put aside those childhood disappointments of hope unrealized. The Lord will not disappoint.
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