Without Hope...What are We?

Has anyone ever said to you, "I didn't want to get your hopes up?"

I have been thinking about hope lately.

We are doing this Bible study on Esther right now, and the first session gave a random scripture reference to Roman's 15:4, which says, "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope."

A couple of words jumped off the page to me that day: endurance, encouragement and hope. So, what did I do...a word study, of course! It seems the root of that word hope is simply the expectation of good. The opposite being the expectation of evil, meaning fear. If finding out that the opposite of hope is fear wasn't interesting enough...the word endurance in that scripture means, "a patient, steadfast waiting for." Leaving us with the last word, encouragement, "consolation and comfort."

With all of that said...what this verse is really telling us is: "For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through a patient steadfast waiting for and consolation and comfort of the Scriptures we might have the expectation of good."


So the Bible was given to us to teach us, and as we wait patiently and expect good things, we can be comforted by those who have gone before us. 


I really like that we can expect good things. If we don't expect the good things in our lives, are we doing the opposite? Are we expecting evil...are we living in fear? So my question is...what are we without hope? ...hope in eternal life, hope in love, hope in our savior, hope in (fill in the blank).

So to all of those people who say, "I didn't want to get your hopes up" I say "too bad they already are...and I planning on keeping it that way!" haha