“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13 (NASB).
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“What hope can you give?” I asked the doctor. “Can we do chemo, radiation, surgery? Is there some experimental drug we can try?”
“Oh, there is no hope,” he answered.
The hospital room grew so quiet I felt an eye-blink would sound in the stillness. My daughter and son-in-law sat in a huddle propped against white sheets. It felt as if a gavel had fallen on my twenty-six-year-old daughter’s young life and time stopped.
When he left, with his team of white-coated stethoscope-necklaced professionals, my son-in-law whispered into the breathless silence, “He can’t take away our hope.”
But we were crushed. Where was the joy and peace, I wondered? Where was the abundance, the running-over hope?
And then I saw it. The object of hope is God. “Now may the God of hope…”
Hope resides in a Person not an outcome. My hope flew up and down like a rollercoaster on the wings of my daughter’s precarious and uncertain health. Circumstances seemed hopeless, her situation impossible, but the God of hope remained the same.
That was ten years ago. Our daughter lived through the catastrophic illness that nearly took her life. My son-in-law was right. The doctor could not take away hope. However, those dark months have left their mark. Today she is wheel chair bound. Despite quadriplegia, she embraces the God of hope, who is constant in every circumstance. His abundant hope spills over us.
Help me put my hope in You alone today, for You are the God of abundant hope.
Sylvia Schroeder serves as Women’s Care Coordinator at Avant Ministries. Visit her blog, When the House is Quiet, atsylviaschroeder.com.