About doing the right thing when hope seems gone…
Psalm 25:21 May integrity and uprightness protect me, because my hope is in
you. 22 Redeem Israel, O God, from all their troubles! (NIV)
When hope is gone, part of life seems to go with it. Our ties to life are all
founded on hope. We hope for the future in innumerable ways. We hope the weather
will get better, the stock market will get better, our health will be better,
and our relationships will renew or increase. Our every action has a thread of
hope connected to it. When hope is gone, life is gone. When hope is gone, life
loses its purpose and meaning. When life loses its purpose and meaning, then it
is easy to fall away from God. People who have lost hope in any circumstance not
only give up on the circumstance, they often give up on living right and always
doing the right thing. The hopelessness of poverty brings with it the caving in
of the desire to live right before God. Consequently, sin then enters into a
person’s life. The hopelessness of the poverty of our spirit also brings the
response of selfishly doing what we want to do rather than what God wants us to
do. The fact is that God gave us a will. We have will power. This power of our
will was given to us by God so in times of hopelessness, in times of financial
or spiritual poverty, we can look up to God and find hope. Christ died to give
us eternal life. Christ coming back to life gives us hope that even when we die
in our body, our spirit will rise up and float into the wonders of Heaven. With
Christ alive in our hearts, there is always hope, there is always life.
