Hope and the Future

Hope is about the future. Sometimes our hopes may be orientated to the next hour, or the next day, or the next month or year or decade. But hope is always about anticipation. Those of us who like to control things often find hope difficult because we do not control the future. Many of us are compulsive makers of plans. We are willing to work ourselves to death trying to make our plans become reality. But when our hopes and vision for the future are based only on what we can control, our vision is inevitably narrowed and impoverished.

We need to remind ourselves regularly, therefore, that God's vision for the future is better than our own. He sees possibilites and opportunities that we cannot see. The horizons of God's imagination are not bounded. When we root our hope in God, a totally different future is possible. It is not a future we can control. God's plan may not be the same as our plans. But we can return again and again to God as our source of hope, and he will remind us that his plans for us are good.

God has been clear about his plans for us. It is God's intention to give us a hope and a future. This is not a promise of a trouble-free life. It is not a promise of immunity from struggle. But it is a promise of hope...

- Rooted in God's Love by Dale and Junita Ryan