Yet I still dare to hope
“22 The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.
23 Great is his faithfulness;
his mercies begin afresh each morning.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance;
therefore, I will hope in him!””
Lamentations 3:22-24 is an oft quoted scripture, and for good reason. It is beautiful and describes the wonderful steadfast character of the gracious God we serve.
I was reading this passage the other day and read the verses that precede it, probably for the first time. And they just jumped off the page for me.
I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”
Back in December (2019), when we were ending the year and anticipating a new one, I felt as thought God dropped the word “hope” in my spirit. Throughout the month, this word kept coming to mind and I kept turning it over and over. I wondered why this word hope kept turning up. It seemed significant, but I did not know for what reason. Like any other time I feel as though God has whispered something to me, I tucked it away in my heart and carried on.
January 2020 came and after an emotional loss the year before, I was ready for a fresh new year. There is nothing more promising than a new start. I think that is why this verse is so popular: “his mercies begin afresh each morning.” Hope leaps from those words because at the start of something, anything is possible. And in my personal life, the start of 2020 was giving birth to new life: I was pregnant again.
Well for anyone not living under a rock, 2020 has been a crazy ride. Between a world wide pandemic, the ensuing quarantine, and nationwide unrest, we are certainly living in uncertain times. And this uncertainty can grip us and fill us with dread, or even fear of the future.
For me personally 2020 has not turned out as I expected. I was somewhat dreading the month of April because of the uncertainty of what to expect for the one year mark of losing the baby. I was also pregnant and didn’t know if that would override it or make it worse. I didn’t want the joy of this pregnancy to lose sight of the loss of last year. Ironically, my 16 week appointment was just two days after the one year mark of last year’s miscarriage. Despite the quarantine, my practice allowed me to come in given my situation. There was no heartbeat.
“I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.”
It almost seemed like a cruel joke. I had spent the week reliving a loss and experienced the same loss all over again. It was indeed an awful time. In addition to working through grief, I had to wrestle with doubt, uncertainty, fear, even guilt. Would I ever have a healthy pregnancy again? Do I even want to try again? But am I ready to give up my dream of having a big family? Can I be content with what I have? Shouldn’t I be content, I’m luckier than most? Did I do something wrong? And the list of thoughts could go on.
“I will never forget this awful time, as I grieve over my loss.
Yet I still dare to hope”
Despite the loss and uncertainty in my personal life, and despite the chaos our nation seems to be in, hope is still my word for 2020. Why?
Because my hope is not in my circumstances. It is not in what I get. It is not in my government. It is not in man. It is not in my family, or even in my fellow Christians. My hope is in Jesus.
Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: the faithful love of the Lord never ends. His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!”
Therefore I will hope in Him.
Our hope is not misplaced:
We can never be separated from the love of God. (Romans 8:35-39)
He works all things together for good. (Romans 8:28)
He makes a path in the wilderness. (Isaiah 43:19)
He will never forsake us nor leave us. (Hebrews 13:5)
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)
He is light that the darkness can never extinguish. (John 1:5)
He is good and what he does is good. (Psalm 119:68)
We can place our hope in Jesus because he is not some of these things some of the times. He is all of these things all of the times. His character is constant. He is steadfast.
Another translation of Lamentations 3:22 says the steadfast love of the Lord never ends. I love this word steadfast. If you look up the definition, steadfast means “1. fixed in direction; steadily directed; 2. firm in purpose, resolution, faith, attachment, as a person; 3. unwavering
We can confidently place our hope in Jesus because He is unwavering and steady. He is firm in His purpose - His Father’s will. He will not veer off course. He is fixed in direction.
So how do we navigate when our situation seems hopeless? When we experience loss, heartache, or even unrest, the enemy wants to overwhelm us with darkness. This darkness then begins to rob us of our hope. He wants us to only see the darkness, to question God’s goodness and character, and to despair that our situation will never be better.
We need something to anchor us when we cannot see. We cannot see the future; we do not know how things are going to unfold. In the darkness we can easily become lost. “Hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls” (Hebrews 6:19).
The hope in this verse is the hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. When we are experiencing difficult times, we “hold to the hope that lies before us” that Jesus keeps His promises, that Jesus will come again and that His kingdom is unshakable. And this hope is certainly an anchor. We cannot say this about anything else. Our hope in anything else will let us down. People let us down, and circumstances will not always be what we expect. We would easily go adrift if we allowed those things to be the anchor of our soul.
And we need to remember that darkness cannot cast out light. Even in the darkest of dark, light can always be seen. No matter how bad things might get here on earth, there is hope in Jesus because He is the light of the world. We navigate through dark times by His Light.
I do not know why God allows things to get so bad. But, in all humility, I do not need to know. I believe God is sovereign. Who am I to question what He does? But I am confident in His character. And because I am confident in His character, I can hope.
In Hebrews 11:1, faith is defined as “confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Our hope ties directly to our faith. This hope that fills my heart is not just positivity. It is not wishful thinking . It is rooted in an unwavering confidence (belief) in Christ and “God can be trusted to keep his promise” (Hebrews 10:23).
I believe God dropped the word hope in my heart because he knew 2020 would appear dark. He knows in our humanity, we get easily lost and afraid, especially in the dark. But He also knows the “great things He has planned for us, plans for good and not for disaster, to give a future and hope” (Jeremiah 29:11). And one day, whether here or in eternity, we will see the fullness of all of His promises.
So hope is my word for 2020 and through the very darkest of days. And I will “hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise.” (Hebrews 10:23)
