GroshLink

Below is a quote which resonated with me as by God's grace, I prepare for the birth of our fourth child [Happy Mother's Day to Theresa!] and continue to lay the foundation for Mid-Atlantic faculty ministry. For your prayerful reflection as you consider the week(s) ahead:

It is essential to distinguish between hoping and wishing. They are not the same.

Wishing is something all of us do. It projects what we want or think we need into the future. Just because we wish for something good and holy we think it qualifies as hope. It does not. Wishing extends our egos into the future; hope desires what God is going to do -- and we don’t yet know what that is.

Wishing grows out of our egos; hope grows out of our faith. Hope is oriented toward what God is doing; wishing is oriented toward what we are doing. Wishing has to do with what I want in things or people or God; hope has to do with what God wants in me and the world of things and people beyond me.

Wishing is our will projeced into the future, and hope is God’s will coming into the future. Picture it in your mind: wishing is a line that comes out of me, with an arrow pointing into the future. Hoping is a line that comes out of God from the future, with an arrow pointing toward me.

Hope means being surprised, because we don’t know what is best for us or how our lives are going to be completed. To cultivate hope is to suppress wishing -- to refuse to fantasize about what we want, but live in anticipation of what God is going to do next. -- Eugene Peterson, Living The Message, posted by cultureisnotoptional (cino).

Just one more comment: it was good to hear Steve Lane, the new pastor of our local congregation, press home that Jesus is the hope of our local congregation and Not Steve.  By God's grace, our congregation places our hope in God and not in the fantastical wishes we may have for the work/ministry of a new pastor and his staff team. Furthermore, as our local congregation comes to know God more and more through walking more closely with Him (i.e., as a pilgrim people transformed by the power of his Spirit) our witness will carry the hope of Jesus to those around us . . . and as part of the larger Body of Christ, to the whole world.  Sola Deo Gloria.  May it be so.   

Join me in prayer that today on Pentecost Sunday, the people of God were strengthened in the faith and the Lord gathered more to Himself.