There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.
Proverbs 23:18

Hope.
I’ve talked about it many times in this space.
But I need to keep talking about it.
Because as much as I wish it were so, it’s not a constant state for me.
It’s something I need to remind myself of on an almost daily basis.
Each time I sit with a family who has lost a loved one,
Each time another person calls me to say “they found another spot in my last test”
Each time someone says I’m not sure how much time I have left.
Each time I look at the news, or jump on social media.
I think: it can’t get worse than this.
I think: THIS, this is rock bottom. This is as bad as it gets.
Right?
And then I have to remind myself that no matter how bad it gets,
no matter how dark things seem, there is always hope.
Hope.
The expectation of good.
Expecting good.
Hope is an exercise for me.
I have to work at it, daily.
So that I don’t get dragged down by the things that chip away at my expectations of good.
And it’s HARD. So hard.

So one of the ways I try to practice hope is by finding places in Scripture that talk about it.
A lot of them have made their way into weekly uplifts.
And though I’ve talked about the Greek word for hope a lot (elpis), today’s text is in Hebrew.
And the word for hope in Hebrew is a little different.
It’s tiqvah. תִּקְוָה
It can be translated as expected thing, outcome, and also cord.
Yeah.
A cord.
A connection between two things.
And in this short verse in Proverbs – hope is used in two different ways.
The first time, it’s the expectation of good.
God promises that there is surely a future hope for you.
That things will get better.
And that’s a great promise all on it’s own.
But the second, that’s the one that is just getting me today.
The second “hope” is the cord.
The cord will not be cut.
The cord will not fail.
Oh you guys.
This is like a glimmer of sunshine breaking through the clouds for me right now.
Yes, there’s good to come, yes, you can place your hope in the reality that things WILL get better.
But even more than that – no matter what happens, the cord connecting you and the God who loves you with unfailing love will not and cannot be broken.
It can’t be cut.
It won’t fail you.
Even when everything else in your life seems to have failed or let you down.
When your health, the doctors, the people who are supposed to love you most – when they fail, God will not.
You are connected to God.
And that connection doesn’t let you down.
It simply cannot fail.
So today, hold onto that.
Sometimes that’s all we can do.
Hold onto the truth that God’s holding on to us.