Resilient Hope - Part 1

Until we moved to California, we had always lived in rented spaces that never had a backyard. In our new home we have our very own backyard and I was excited to plan the space well. Being new to gardening, we hired people to plant most of the plants and among them were four bougainvillea. However, a week after they were planted, they started to wither and looked like they were dying. I was really disheartened. The men who planted them said it happened because this area is windy and these plants wouldn't have survived here anyway. I was sad because I felt I had brought them to our home to care for them and they died on my watch.

We had another gardener look at it, and a few friends too, and they were all of the opinion that it might come back and to keep watering it. So I watered and watched. I put fertilizers, changed the soil, did everything I could, but there were no signs of a revival. A month later, when the gardener looked at it again, he broke a branch and said “oh yea, now it's really gone". That broke my heart a little bit because I had tried, I had done my part and had even prayed for it to come back...

My husband said they looked as good as dead and wanted to throw them away, but he didn’t, because he could see that I still had hope written all over my face. Maybe it was my own return from a similar place in life that gave me hope that God could do something in the face of even an expert's verdict. I continued to water them for another month…still no sign. Slowly, I began to feel my own hope fade and then one fine day, in the third month, to our absolute surprise, one of the four plants sprang to life… a few baby leaves began to show up!

I never knew I would have such joy over a plant, guys! Here it is yet another month later...

I was reminded of the verse “Abraham was a person “Who against hope believed in hope… Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead…” - Romans 4:18-19

Against hope believed in hope…

When I was doing my Masters, a guest lecturer had said “the death of Hope is the greatest death of all...” That statement intrigued me and though he said it in passing, something about it made me pause and reflect - What does it mean? How is that the greatest death of all? I'm certain that back then I scoffed at it and thought to myself "surely there are worse things than losing hope... right?"

The word hope is such a tiny word, or so it seemed to me when I was led to write about it. The verse God put in my heart was something that is so familiar to us;

“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

- 1 Corinthians 13:13

I remember thinking, what depth could there be in this word compared to faith & love? Especially since the verse itself points out that the greatest of these is LOVE. But I knew that my part was to pray and sit with it...needless to say, by the time God was done teaching me, I had a whole different view of hope.

I believe that faith requires that we should always be strong and steadfast in our God. And our actions of faith need to be ruled by love or it will be as The Word says, just a clanging cymbal. So when faith & love are so intertwined with one another then - where does hope fall in the midst of all this?

Hope is defined as a feeling of trust or of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. It is also defined as the grounds for believing something good will happen, or that a person or thing may help or save someone.

If there was ever a time in our generation that we were waiting for something good to happen - it is now! Or at least, we are hoping. Everyday we are hoping that this pandemic will come to an end. We wake up to headlines showing us that humanity is hurting in so many ways. The issues that have been around for long are all now magnified to show us the error of our ways, it's like an open wound that does not heal because of all the underlying conditions. When we decide to tackle and search our hearts about a, b and c... we find new headlines of x, y and z. It takes all of our strength to not throw up our hands in despair or shake our heads and say,"it's a hopeless situation".

So how do we ensure that our hearts don't abandon hope in this season of constant disappointment and discouragement? The word of God says...

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope (not faith/love) and a future." – Jeremiah 29:11

I love how this verse talks about God wanting to give us hope... because He knows that in the tough seasons of life, as we wait with great faith in Him, we need HOPE... and definitely a greater measure of it in these times...

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to be continued...