Some of us expect to be disappointed. We have somehow gotten used to it. So while we go through life, doing what needs to be done, we don’t get too excited.

As we watch the news, we wonder how anything will ever change. 

Hope can be like that - the build-up of expected realities but the reality doesn’t meet what we first imagined. 

Without hope, however, we lack purpose. Without hope, there is nothing to pass on to the next generations.

Hope is necessary to live as people fully alive. Hope is what sustains visions, dreams, business opportunities, new designs, ways of thinking. Hope restores marriages and friendships. Hope creates music and art. Hope is the belief in something that we are not able to quite put our hands on at the moment. It’s the belief in something beyond us.

Hope motivates us to pursue, dream, imagine and believe; not just to have positive talk so we feel better. Hope helps us overcome tragedy and heartache. Hope sustains us in the midst of sadness.  

Many will argue for evidence of God, to prove God’s existence because we feel like we have been let down. Somehow, God didn’t come through when we needed him the most.

We have been hurt and disappointed. We have been overwhelmed and it felt like God wasn’t interested.

I get that.

That’s been an eternal struggle, even through the scriptures. There is plenty in our world we can point to as evidence that God doesn’t exist.

In my moments of wrestling, struggling and questioning, I come to the end of myself with one question; if not God, then what?

Whatever your story, disappointment, heartache, sadness, do not give up. There is hope.