Thoughts on Hope

 Hope has been always prevalent in our lives. The word became a campaign slogan during the last presidential campaign. (The promise that government will provide heaven on earth). It’s become essentially meaningless, or only means specific things to specific people or groups.

We all hope for things. Usually it’s for stuff, or the means to get stuff, or to be released from something causing us pain or discomfort, or an event that will benefit us.  These things I don’t think of so much as hope but wishes, dreams and fantasy. What they have in common is they’re secular and about the self.

What’s lost in our secular society is where the idea of hope comes from; it’s other meaning is faith based. Understanding that is what can give hope a working meaning, not a fantasy for the future.  Hope is an expectation, something we yearn for or anticipate. It comes from the Hebrew “Tiqvah”. That in turn comes from “Qavah” meaning to wait for. Originally Tiqvah meant “to stretch like a rope”. The word shows up thirty three times in the Bible.

In Joshua is the story of the House of Rahab, where some of his spies hid out when in Acacia Grove. Rahab came under suspicion and soldiers were sent to investigate. In this story, there were two men she was hiding and when asked lied to the soldiers about them. They escaped by dropping a rope from her house over the wall of the city. Rahab knew the men were from the Jews outside the city, were sent by God, and that they were going to invade. She wanted assurances that her family would survive when the Jews took the city. The said to her: “…unless, when we come into the land, you bind this line of scarlet cord in the window through which you let us down, and unless you bring your father, your mother, your brothers, and all your father’s household to your own home.” The red cord would be the identifier to the Jewish army which house was hers’, and to let it be. Symbolically the red cord represents Christ’s redemption of us. We just need to hold on to Him. 

We have the rope of redemption, which is our hope. It’s not something based on fantasy or wishes; it’s founded in God’s promise to us. Hope that God will redeem us; guide our future through Grace and our acceptance of Christ. Hope in this sense is a certainty. If we allow God to guide our lives, we’ll get a good outcome, which is Him. It’s hope based in faith, and that faith in turn is confidence in the future, not a projection of our own wishes and fantasies of self fulfillment.

It’s hard sometimes to determine, or even better, to discern, between what’s our wishes and God’s grace and guidance. Those of us that have the good sense and good fortune to know God, understand that hope is based on His certainty, is not self based, and patience and prayer will fulfill His hopes for us.

That’s how the future that will pan out for us, not with the hope for stuff we wish for. 

Our 'Forward Looking' President Looks Back to Criminalize the Previous Administration

Hope and Change. Looks like one of the changes, from someone that campaigned on looking forward, is to look back and investigate the previous administration for civil and criminal charges. Never been done before, for obvious reasons. Hey Bambster, way to unite the country; try and jail the opposition.

I've got to ask. Does anyone think for a minute that any Dems on the intelligence committees, Dem officers in the FBI and CIA, that participated or approved of actions, will be investigated and brought to trial too?

When the next Republican president is voted into power, just think of all the fun we can have returning the favor. How fun is it going to be rounding up and investigating all the embezzlement, payoffs, leaked security info to enemy states...all that stuff? How many ACORN people will we be able to lock up? How many SEIU thugs. Apollo Alliance operatives (I'll be writing about these guys in a later post.) Barney Frank. Chris Dodd. These last two guys were investigated, by Dem committees of course, and guess what? They're pure as ... of course. Payoffs to Zero Population Growth. Natural Resources Defense Council. Institute For America's Future. Laborers' International Union of North America. The reason all these leftist groups and contributers, and lots more, is because after the (un)stimulus package, all the sudden they're in the money. hmmmmmm I'd go after Raines too. He made something like $90 mill in six years at Fannie May, which is the primary source of all the economic mess we're in now.

Of course the primary the reason the Bamster and his backup group, The Dems, need to change the tune is that 'cap 'n tax' and ObamaCare hit a bunch of sour notes, the crowd is booing, and will start leaving the building. They need to distract so they can rearrange ObamaCare and try and sneak it though in the second act.

So if the Bamster wants to go down the road of criminalizing the policies (and in this case, GW had congressional approval and oversight, so they'll go down too), I'm ready for turnabout being fair play.