Saturday 1 December 2012

"Send"

There are times when your desires far outweigh your rationality, times when, even though you know something is a terrible idea, the decision doesn't sit easily because you want it more than you care about the consequences. I can spend days or even weeks debating over something, but I send myself round in circles. It always ends with my rational brain saying "No that's a terrible idea, there's nothing to say" as my tiny hoping little heart just whispers "Do it, if it happened once it can happen again, and it maybe better this time." It's the part of us that hopes, that maybe this time things will be different, maybe this time things will change, and maybe this time they can make me happy.

Hope is a powerful thing, and and it can both help repair the wounded heart, but also bruise and break it once again. The dictionary defines hope as "something to be wished for with the expectation/ confidence of its fulfilment." I think so often today, we hope but that hope isn't necessarily followed with the expectation of its fulfilment. We just tell ourselves that it might be possible, that the possibility of change, of something good or better is simply enough to put our hearts into it and invest ourselves. But should we really invest something as valuable and fragile as our hearts on something as uncertain as HOPE? Furthermore, are we confusing hope with desire?

Desire is defined as something which you "wish or long for," that is it. There is no expectation of fulfilment, no kind of certainty or confidence attached to it at all, simply a wish. Too often we invest our hearts in what we desire and I believe that too often we confuse hope with desire. We keep our hearts in a situation because we want it to improve, we want it to be different to before. But there is no evidence that it actually maybe different, it is simply our hearts saying but "I want this, let me hope," even when your head perhaps knows that you need to take your heart out of it, even when your head knows that the wish for more is hurting your heart and that hope is a different thing altogether because it requires an expectation and a confidence that things can work.

In my life, the only true hope I have is in Jesus. It's a hope greater than anything else and one which I have the confidence and expectation to be fulfilled. I trust my heart will not be broken by it, because all who believe in him will be given eternal life and the knowledge that those whose hope is in him will not be disappointed.

So, next time I want to press that "send" button, I have to trust that the hope I have in Christ for something better outweighs the short-lived and destructive desire of the present. It is difficult, but no-one said looking after your heart was easy, otherwise you wouldn't have to "guard" it.

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