There is much anticipation watching this little black line flicker.

I return with the hope of writing so much, but like the cycle of life, this smothering repeats itself. Over and over. My words are swallowed. Hope is murdered. Threaded in the next event, hope will be smothered again. And again.

A breath from the lion’s mouth

Not long ago, I learned that hope can be neither created, nor destroyed. In the same eternal principle that it cannot be destroyed, it cannot be created. For now, my focus shall lie on the fact it cannot be destroyed. It cannot be murdered.  

Hope lingers whether what you’re hoping for will be, or not be. 

Hope is there to keep you going. 

Hope kept me going. 

It doesn’t matter if what I hoped for would be there. It doesn’t matter where I was. 

Hope drove my every move, even when I was unwilling to move. I could speak about being depressed and wanting to give up. I could speak about not wanting to go. Not wanting to move. But my reality is that when I wanted to stop, I was pushed by hope. 

Hope came along and saved me. Hope of Him. Hope that wasn’t my own. 

It’s hard to explain in precise detail how hope carried me. How it controlled my situation. How it grasped defeat, using it for fuel. 

Hope is saying “I can’t” and yet, doing it because I did not die today. 

“I can’t, but I need to.”

Hope showed up in obligation, hope bonds with the needs in my life. 

There is hope when you are fighting for your life. Those in survival mode are filled with unending hope. Because everyday they know they need to make it to the next, and hope they get there. And even when they don’t want to go, needing to saves them.

Everyday, I needed to make it to the next.  

I was so tired most days, sitting with just a quarter tank of gas. I knew I had enough to make it to the city, but I didn’t have enough to show up for the job I needed. The job that would soon be provision, even in ways I had not understood. 

In the most subtle way, surely so, that I hadn’t realized until a few months in, hope was the reason I’d head to the city anyway. Why I’d work tirelessly to get there. Why I’d use what I had to get there.

It is hard not to express the one fact about hope. The key that would in turn, make everything make sense. Him. 

The blessing in my life is that He flows. 

I’ve never had a moment in my life where the vision of my future wasn’t bright. 

I cry because I see this bright future, yet around me is darkness. Where I cannot see. And where I am afraid of that which I do not understand. 

An essential ridge in the key of hope. 

I have always had to want more. More of what I want. And more of what I need. The obligations. 

All I know is to want to be taken care of. It was all I had seen. When I’d look at my clothes, I’d see more. “One day.”

In essence, when I looked at all that I had lacked, I’d see more. And surely, I would believe. “One day.”

I am a stickler for plans. Planning for the next event of the day, before the year passes for it to come again. On this day, next year.

My mind was created to continuously look to the future. To plan. From biology to environmental, He created me to look to the future. To see the things in front of me and look for a vision of better. He created a thing in me that would cause me to look toward the direction of my mind, to which then, He would place a vision.

Some call it being future oriented. I call it God being God. 

That is my blessing. To learn that He has caused me to be this way. 

That over every year I have lived, I would live to dare look at the future. And His faithfulness would allow me to never see anything other than better. 

A driving force. 

Though it seems depressing, after all I have learned, I have to speak with truth. 

My present life was nothing like all that I would see. Yet, I know it was a key component to growing the seed of hope He had placed in me. Lacking, yet only* ever seeing better has always made me try. 

It is only later, through the fire, that my present not matching up with the vision, would seek to devour me. To burn the hope inside me. Yet what He has placed in me cannot be created, nor destroyed. For He has no beginning and no end.

And beneath this, is the fact, that through my entire life He has never let what seeks to destroy, touch me. Which in turn would allow the flames to die when “later” came.

At a moment’s notice, I realized that He had gotten me through everything. 

And like the day we met, when it all made sense, I was set free from the fire that seeks to destroy me.

2 Timothy 4:17

But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth.