Daily Meditation: "Hope"

SCRIPTURE

"Put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet the hope of salvation." - I Thessalonians 5:1-11

REFLECTION

I dare say that these days, no matter who you are, you’re looking for a little bit of hope. Hope for change, hope for stability, hope for normalcy, hope for health and safety, hope for peace…

Hope can be a fragile thing, sometimes. There are moments when we frame our hopes in such ways that life itself can seem to come crashing down when those hopes are dashed. We can sometimes conflate hopes with expectations, and that’s where we can really get ourselves in a pickle. We often expect people or things to be a certain way, turn out a certain way, and when they don’t and our expectations aren’t met we lose faith. We can also lose hope.

So, Paul wisely uses the metaphor of hope as a helmet. For Paul, writing to the church in Thessalonica, hope is hard, resilient, even offers protection.

This helmet is what can protect us from despair and depression, sadness and frustration at the world’s too-often painful realities. Speaking for myself, I know there have been moments (or stretches of time longer than moments) when hope has seemed far away and I am battered and bruised by what’s going on around and often within me.

Hope can be a protective garment against the harsh realities that life often assails us with and keeps us going, keeps us focused on a future-oriented time when things will be better and not as they currently are, and protects us from the assault of that which would seek to bring us down.

We all need the helmet of hope these days. Put yours on and let’s keep moving forward. Better days do indeed await us.

That’s my hope, anyway!

PRAYER

God Of Hope, adorn us with the garments of faith that protect and encourage us to move through life’s difficult moments so we can emerge into the sunshine of a better day.

Amen.

Peace,

Shawn