Life could take,
take every dream away,
you’d still be my Risen One,
the place where my Hope comes from.
Life could break,
you’d still be saving grace,
my promise of all to come,
the place where my Help comes from
All my hope is in You,
my treasure and my truth,
my hope is in You.
TRENT BAND
Hope is a curious thing isn’t it?! It changes everything. One moment you’re in a situation that is ghastly, one that’s just hard and horrible, and takes all your effort to just stay put. But the next moment, with hope, you have a reason to keep going. The difficult becomes bearable. The stress isn’t stressful, it becomes more irritating than troublesome. So what’s the difference? Why is it that the same situation, at two different points in time, and sometimes very close points in time, can see me peacefully pushing on, or quaking and quick to give up?
Well, it’s perspective isn’t it. It’s what you’re looking at. It’s how you’re viewing things.
Take something ordinary, say a plant or a candle or something. It can look utterly mundane or really dramatic, huge or insignificant, just depending on the lighting and the angle – just depending on how you look at it, on your perspective. Isn’t life the same? Something can look huge, or utterly mundane, just depending on how you look at it.
So why do I fluctuate, so dramatically, so regularly? Is it that my perspective keeps shifting? Is it that my vantage point shifts? Is it that my focus drifts?
I suggest it is. I suggest that we’re not consistant, not steadfast. We have the occaisional epiphany during our hardest times, when we see things in their real perspective, from outside our selves…
And suddenly I see,why the hell it means so much to me…
And we remember, when we see things as they really are, what our hope is. We remember why we weren’t so afraid last time, why we had peace. We realise that no matter what happens, our hope hasn’t changed. The Hope we have for our whole life hasn’t changed, it hasn’t shifted. It cannot change. It cannot shift.
But we can. And we do. And we have. And we will do again.
But I propose that we don’t settle for this. I propose we set our eyes on Him. I propose that we don’t take them off Him. I propose that we keep each other looking at Him. Of course we will fall, of course we will miss the mark… but we know we will miss the mark, and we know we will fall, and that is our advantage. We will be ready. We will be waiting and watching. We will know and recognise that when we least want to look up, that is when we must, we absolutely must, and it will change everything. We will be prepared to wrench our eyes off our problems and look back up to our Hope, to our God, our Redeemer, the One who holds us and everything always in His hands.
So turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
and the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the Light of His Glory and Grace.
So I will put my hope in Him. I will put my hope back in Him when I drift. I will trust Him when I have stopped trusting Him. I know I will, because His Life blood is in me, His Spirit well up within me, He will bring me back, He will stir in me again, he will call me back. He lives my Life and and He yearns to more and more everyday. He is faithful, He is true, He is loving, He is just, He is powerful, He is Awesome. You know He is. Just Trust Him.
Pursuit of Permeation 