Where Is Your Hope?

I’m not sure how you’ve been affected, but the coronavirus (and subsequent economic panic) has been discouraging to our family financially.

About a year ago, my husband started a small business. The first year of building a business is filled with financial strain, long hours, and stress. Though it was doing well, it just wasn’t prepared to weather a sudden plummet in sales and surge of product returns… all right after hiring his first employee. And it doesn’t seem like the situation will improve any time soon.

It’s hard. It’s weighing on us. It feels like all the progress made has come crashing down.

Obviously, we’re not the only ones affected.

Some of you are anxious about loved ones with vulnerable immune systems, others are anxious about keeping your jobs, paying your mortgages, and other non-health related consequences of the virus. Maybe you’re considering postponing your wedding, or your international adoption has halted, or your long-anticipated vacation—the one you spent years scrimping and saving for—has been canceled.

But church, God is still God. And He is still good. And He is still in control.

We can’t place our hope in our health, or our jobs, or our money, or our government, or our plans, or our investments, or ANYTHING besides Him.

When we feel shaken, we need to ask where we’ve built our house: Did we build upon the Rock, the one place that will remain standing after a storm? Or did we build upon the sand?

I don’t say this flippantly, or to infer our suffering isn’t real. Faith isn’t stoicism—it’s good and right to grieve before God. He wouldn’t offer us comfort if He didn’t welcome our tears.

But we need to consider where we’ve placed our hope.

I don’t know why God ordains and allows things like this to happen. But I do know that He is trustworthy, He is faithful, and He has a purpose. And I believe that one purpose of this hardship is to refine His people.

He is exposing idols we’ve placed our hope in.

He is dismantling our false sense of control.

He is giving us a chance to shine the light of Christ in a dark world.

People around us are confused, and frustrated, and anxious, and hurting. And though we may be struggling too, we have a sure and steady hope! In Christ, there is peace that surpasses understanding. In Christ, no matter what devastation comes our way, nothing can separate us from His love. In Christ, there is ultimately nothing to fear, because He has conquered both sin and death.

Hold on to that hope… and share it with others.