Waiting For Hope

 

Waiting For Hope For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. Galatians 5:5 There are times when things look very dark to me—so dark that I have to wait even for hope. It is bad enough to wait IN hope. A long-deferred fulfillment carries its own pain, but to wait FOR hope, to see no glimmer of a prospect and yet refuse to despair; to have nothing but night before me and yet to keep the window open for possible stars; to have a vacant place in my heart and yet to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence—that is the grandest patience in the universe. It is Job in the tempest; it is Abraham on the road to Moriah; it is Moses in the desert of Midian; it is Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. There is no patience so difficult as that which endures, waiting for hope. LORD, you have made waiting beautiful; you have made patience divine. You have taught us that the Father’s will may be received just because it is His will. You have revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than our own. Give me this Divine power of Thine, the power of Gethsemane. Give me the power to wait for hope itself. —George Matheson