Hope

"Send forth your light and your truth,
let them guide me;
let them bring me to your holy
mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then will I go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the harp,
O God, my God.

Why are you so downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God."

Psalm 43: 3-5

Discontentment. A million things can be going right, but all it takes is one thing to go wrong, one thing to not turn out as I had wanted for me to feel deeply discouraged. This happens to me more frequently than I care to admit.

Sometimes, things don't even have to go wrong--they just have to feel "off". If my perception so strongly influences whether or not I feel content, then what does that say about where I am putting my hope?

When my hope is truly in God, there is a sense of all-pervading joy; a desire to worship even when life is stressful and things have not gone my way. Unfortunately, my heart is too fickle and easily enticed to place hope elsewhere.

This passage reminds me that God's larger purposes and plans are to bring His lost sheep into His presence. There may be times where we feel lost and alone, and as though nothing is going the way it should, but we must never lose heart! God will draw us near--He has sent Jesus, the absolute embodiment of light and truth, to be our guide. With such wondrous love bestowed upon us, how can discontentment be anything but fleeting and skin-deep?

I need to remember this--particularly as I head into the last two busy school-weeks before Christmas.