HOPE

photo from Pinterest!

As beautiful as it is dangerous.

Hope is Biblical, I’m well aware of this, but is it possible to hold onto it for longer than you should, longer than you’re meant to?

If hope was solely a good thing, I don’t think God would have referred to those holding on to it as “prisoners of hope.” Yes, in the same verse, He also makes a promise to return twice as much as they have lost to them, so in being a prisoner of hope, they had lost much (these were the Jewish exiles in Babylon, by the way).

I keep on asking myself if I can forever cling to hope, the hope that someday, things will be different in a certain area of life, and how much am I willing to lose in holding on to it?

I recall saying a few months ago, “I don’t like hope,” because it has no backing attached to it, no promise of any kind. With faith, you’re holding on tight to the Word of God, to His promises, to what you know He’s prophesied over you but with hope, there’s no true promise attached to it, you’re just hoping that circumstances will change, that things will finally go the way you want them to.

When I thought that some months ago, I wondered, “Won’t it be better to live a life without hope?” 

But then it occurred to me what a horrible life that would be; a life without dreams, goals, experiences and even happiness (not joy—because joy is lasting and comes from God and not one’s circumstances). 

And I saw Zechariah 9:12 in a new light, “Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope; even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you.” 

Isn’t this a promise? He doesn’t promise that that exact thing we hope for will be given to us, but He promises that twice as much will be restored to us. It’s a verse that shows us that hope might not be as deadly as we think; it might not be as fruitless as we sometimes see, but it is backed by a promise—not the one we want necessarily but one that is greater, one that is bigger and one that is better because we know that God doesn’t give anything other than His best to His children and if He promises to restore twice as much to you—twice as much as you’ve lost, because restoration indicates there was a loss of something—then best believe He would. After all, He doesn’t make promises He doesn’t keep!

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This was meant to be a poem, but instead it became this. Hope is a topic that has been on my mind for the past couple of months, and now, more than before, I'm understanding it and seeing it in a new light. I don't think I've understood it fully yet, but I think my perspective is changing, and I hope with this, yours can as well.

Much love,

Uche 🤍

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