The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
In the past, I used to watch for my boys’ buses to come down the road when the snow hit because I was remembering my bus rides. We had hit our share of mailboxes, gone in ditches, and even got stuck on a hill because we had no traction. One thing I have to say, we always made it home. It may not have been the way we were expecting or the time frame that was set, but we ended up getting to where we were supposed to be.
Do you ever feel like you’ll never get to where you’re supposed to be? You think you have the path to follow, but something keeps stopping you? I think this is when frustration and a spirit of quitting wants to come in. We don’t understand why things aren’t working out when we’re following all the steps and keeping our eyes ahead.
I know there’ve been times when I’ve felt like saying, “I’ve tried. I’ve given it my all. I must’ve had the wrong path. There are too many factors that don’t allow the vision any more. I need to let it go because all I’m feeling is frustration, and that isn’t what I should be feeling.” Have you ever felt that way? Sometimes I feel like there’s a rubber band attached to my waist. I move forward, but something is holding the other side.
When I used to work in an office that my great-uncle owned, there would be the occasional shenanigans that would take place…especially since the office consisted of all family members. Rubber bands were the favorite of a couple people. They weren’t necessarily used for office work either.
My uncle had a sense as to when that silent projectile would go flying. He would step out of his office in that dignified manner he had and say, “It’s all fun and games until someone gets hit in the eye.” Everyone would hear his wisdom and get back to work. The launch would be halted. It wasn’t the right time to fly.
I had to question if that rubber band around my waist would ever be launched. If it didn’t feel like it would be, I started to wonder if I should just except my life the way it was. It was a wonderful life, but I just had a vision that didn’t quite match the current circumstances.
Here’s a word that kept coming up to me…hope. Do you remember the verse to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding? I thought that verse would go perfectly with my circumstances just the way it was, except I was hearing to hope in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. I wanted to find out what the difference between trust and hope is.
I learned that both trust and hope are optimistic. The dictionary says that trust is the firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. Hope is a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. It’s a feeling of trust. I strongly believe it’s important to have both. Hope would be worthless if we didn’t have the foundation of trust.
I put my trust in God. To me, that’s the most solid, unmoving foundation I could have. Hope isn’t as solid all the time in my mind. I struggle with that a little more. I trust God, but when things don’t seem to be moving forward, do I give up hope? When we give up hope, is that saying we don’t trust God enough?
Let’s go back to those buses. If we attempted to keep moving when it was stuck, we would’ve gotten stuck even more in the ditch. If we would’ve kept pushing to go when we were stuck on the hill, it would’ve put us into the woods instead of waiting for something to be put down for traction. It would’ve taken us even longer to get to our destination.
There are times that we can’t rush to our destination, but we trust that God will get us there. We can’t sit and say, “This is taking forever, we’re going to be stuck all night…or all year…or all our life.” We need to keep hoping that the next try is the one that God has for us.
Will you let disappointment overwhelm you or will you take the time to grow and learn during the period that feels you keep getting thrown back to your old life? That’s how we’ll be prepared for the destination. I trusted that I would get home eventually, but if I took all the stuff out of my backpack because I gave up hope that it would happen soon, I’d be the one extending the time on the bus when I arrived back home.
I challenge you to not give up hope. Let go of your past bus rides and hope for better today. If you do head back, use that time to grow and keep hoping because that rubber band that keeps flinging you back to where you were, will eventually launch you into where you need to be going!
