Hope and Growth

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

She and I were longing for hope. This week, we found it everywhere. And we’ve grown.

I sometimes felt God’s face was far from us the recent, difficult months. But I learned that He wanted us to grow by seeing his hope in other’s faces, in prayers and gifts of friends, and even where I was least expecting it…

Hope has real faces. Susan: my daughter’s advocate last week, behind the doctor’s office desk. Cat: my daughter’s advocate this week, behind another doctor’s desk, in another city, in another state. And the doctor who looked like he could be her grandfather, treated her like his friend, and referred her with urgency to the specialist she truly needs to see.

Hope expressed itself in prayers of friends. Friends sending emails. Notes. A teddy bear.

Hope even showed up in the street address of the doctor himself, situated on Hope Avenue.

And hope showed herself where I was least expecting her. I would have even forgotten to look. It is the fourth year my daughters have used art to express hope. But we’ve been so preoccupied with our own lack of hope that we would have forgotten to make room for it in our days this week. Until a friend we’ve only met through her kind notes and sweet gifts of art supplies and art reminded us.

Melissa asked if the girls were doing their annual Art Challenge, to encourage kids to help other kids. She asked if she could help by sponsoring their efforts. She set up an awesome 12-hour art-a-thon going on today, 8/13, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (Please take a look and join in–with a child or grandchild or friend–even if just for an hour today.)

Meanwhile, my daughter will be seeing a specialist who has already offered us hope, before we’ve even met him. And we’ve grown so much this week realizing that God has entrenched hope all around us, sometimes in the very places we least expected to see it.

My youngest daughter made an Artist Tarding card today. (Her momma’s daughter, she wrote about it too.) She didn’t know how I had been thinking about these two things: Hope and Growth. We witness the many faces of one so we can do the other. But her card summed up my thoughts, without her even knowing.

We need to find hope in every day and grow in the process.

I’ve been reminded many times this week of an old hymn. I have fond memories of singing it as a child, with my Dad’s off-tempo country-boy voice bellowing out beside me in the pews of the Wesleyan Church of my youth.

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

His oath, His covenant, and blood
Support me in the whelming flood;
When every earthly prop gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand;
All other ground is sinking sand.

________________________________________

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-4