A Future and a Hope

Usually the coming of a new year is something I welcome.  I may even try to use this “graduation” to a higher number on the calendar as a prod toward some improvement or change in my behavior or thinking.  However, after an all-encompassing newness has been imposed upon one’s existence as it has been for me with my husband Jim’s sudden death in August, forward thinking about the future almost seems impossible.  I remember as a teenager reading a letter my aunt must have written to my Mom or Dad when her husband died.  She expressed a similar feeling, even a “what future?” attitude even though she was much younger than I am with her three children still living at home.  It’s as if half of a person’s body has disappeared. 

               Hope, hopeful expectation of something good--this is a basic component in positive, purposeful living.  As God’s voice has resonated within me before, it does so again to nurture, to renew my ability to believe I will somehow move toward blessing.  Many years ago I became acquainted with a “big time” Bible verse in Jeremiah.  The prophet is telling God’s wayward people that even though they are about to be taken captive and exiled for a period of time, God will bring them back.  He tells them His plans are for good and not evil, to give them a future and a hope(Jeremiah 29:11).

For many years my attention has been on the “plans” part of this scripture and how God’s plans are only good ones.  But, now I find myself clinging to the latter promise to give a “future and a hope.”  As my future, at least the immediate one, still seems a bit illusive to me, I look to God’s word and His certainty to fulfill it.