Faith, Hope, Love.

1 Corinthians 13:11-14

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

It is integral to a healthy Christian walk that we are always growing and always learning. I have recently come to the conclusion that at every point in our walk with God we are always learning about and strengthening one of these three things; Faith, Hope, and Love. In this particular segment of my journey I am learning about hope. I feel like hope is the forgotten middle child of this family. The obvious focal point of this verse is love, and so it should. We also put a great deal of emphasis on faith, because without faith there would be no relationship, no walk with God, no acceptance of forgiveness and so on and so on. It seems like hope is not weighed on the same scale as the other two. I could be gravely mistaken but i feel like hope is not defined or explained as clearly as the other two. Hebrews 11:1 for Faith, 1st Corinthians 13:4 for Love, but what about hope?

I dont mean to seem flippant about it but i think that hope is not defined specifically is because Hope is universal. Love is specific, Faith is specific, Hope is abstract. Sadly not everyone will experience tangible love, not everyone will come into a faith in Jesus Christ, but i guarantee you that hope is something that every human being has had intimiate experience with. Hope is the homeless man in line for a bed at the shelter, hope is a Chilean miner, hope is a present under the tree, hope is a schoolboy crush, hope is clinging to the promises of a friend, a lover, your family, or the Father. It is the one thing the world clings to when all else has failed. 

I think that we as Christians need to learn how to relate our hope to the rest of the world. I think its the one things that everyone truly understands. People everywhere hope in things that will fail, we have hope in the one thing that will never fail. I think as world continues to spiral out of control and there is rampant devastation on a global scale the one thing people can still latch onto is hope.


Thats my 2 cents.


Theme Song for the Day


Whole World in His Hands - Tim Hughes