Dev: Nov 14 - Ruth 1:12

… Even if I thought

there was hope for me …

Ruth 1:12

 

Years ago, my wife’s beloved 2½ year old poodle died rather suddenly and very unexpectedly. Brain cancer.

 

When it was finally time to get a new dog, she said, “What’s the Hebrew word for ‘Hope’?” “Why?” “Because that’s what I want to want to name my dog, since I’m hoping in the Lord for a good dog!”

 

Now we didn’t actually name our dog that word for hope. (One of the most common Hebrew words for hope is tikvah, but we didn’t want to wish ticks and fleas on our pet!) Nevertheless, we still chose a form of ‘hope,’ a less common Hebrew word that speaks of hopefulness – chasah.

 

The question for today is this: What are you hoping for?

 

For these next several weeks, we’re going to be focusing on hope. Hope is an obviously an important spiritual concept. We hear about the Messiah being Israel’s long-awaited hope and salvation. We hear about heaven being our eternal hope. But do you know the first time “hope” occurs in the scriptures (the first time at least according to my translation)?   

 

It’s in our verse for today. Naomi and her Jewish family moved to the land of Moab. Now her husband and both her sons have died. And she is hopeless. Defeated, she is going to wander back to Israel. And her plan is to do it alone. In fact, in the fullness of this verse, she is urging her Moabite daughters-in-law to stay in Moab. She’s essentially saying, “’Even if I thought there was hope for me’ back home in Israel, there’s no hope for us as a family or for you as young women without husbands.”

 

Hopeless!

 

She is looking down at this earth … and not at all up to heaven. And in her power and according to the ways of this world, everything truly does look hopeless.

 

Have you ever been there?

 

I don’t want to compare for a second my wife’s loss of a dog to Naomi grief for her husband and sons. (Not by a million miles.) And I don’t want compare my wife’s grief to yours – whatever it is. Nevertheless, I do want suggest that there are two ways of looking at the world. One is in a purely human way. The other is in a hope-filled way.

 

My wife look up from her grief and said, “I’m hoping in the Lord for a good dog.”

 

Which direction are you pointing in life. If it’s downward (if it’s earthly), you’ll inevitably be very disappointed. (Everyone dies.) But if you focus upward and hope in the Lord, then the best is yet to come. Always!

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who’s honestly and

probably a little dyslexic –

and yet I know that my hope

does not come from DOG.

(It comes from GOD.)