When Hopes are Dashed

{sidebar id=1}Have you ever had it all stripped away?

A song we play a lot on the radio is called “The Heart of Worship.” The opening line is, “When the music fades, and all is stripped away.”

Have you ever been there – a place where you felt like everything was stripped away?

I was digging through a box in my garage when I came across a letter I received over 20 years ago. It was from a young lady who was engaged to be married. Suddenly things unraveled with her fiancé, and before long he married someone else. She was shell shocked. She had high hopes – of a wedding and a husband and a family. Hopes of a bright future and growing old with this man.

And suddenly it was all stripped away.

There is a powerful little phrase that, because we’ve heard it a million times, has become cliché. But listen to it with fresh ears.

“When hopes are dashed.”

When something is dashed, it is thrown down and smashed into pieces. It is suddenly and thoroughly destroyed. When our hopes are dashed, part of us dies. Having your hopes dashed is such a crushing blow, you can only handle it a time or two. More than that and it’s almost impossible to bounce back. Because of that, we have a built-in insulator. To avoid further pain, we harden our hearts. To keep our hopes from being dashed, we just stop hoping, because we learn that when we hope, we are vulnerable.

Yet hope is foundational to our existence.

Remember the big three in First Corinthians 13: “faith, hope and love.”

A friend of mine once told me there are three things we all need to be happy:

1. Someone to love.

2. Something to do.

3. Something to look forward to.

That “something to look forward to” is where hope comes in.

Now I’m thinking about women who want children but find out they can’t have them. What they had looked forward to all their lives – their hope is dashed. The same is true when a mother miscarries. Hopes are dashed when a loved one dies. The “something to look forward to” is stolen, and part of us dies with them.

I’ll never forget talking to an old, old lady at church one time. She could hardly talk or see anymore, but she was clear minded. She told me about her children and grandchildren and even great, great grandchildren. And she told me about her children who had already passed away. Then I’ll never forget what she said, her eyes welling up with tears, “A mother is not supposed to outlive her children.”

In spite of her troubles, she was not some bitter, hopeless old woman. On the contrary, she had a peace and joy. I had no idea the sorrow in her life until she told me. How could she still have hope, after all she had been through?

The only way to have hope, is to keep your hopes from being dashed. And the only way to keep them from being dashed is to put them in a safe place. When we put our hopes in anything in this world, we are setting them up to be dashed. Realistically, if I put my hopes in my wife or my children, or my job or my health, or my family or friends, I am setting them up to be dashed.

We must put our hopes in a safe place, and the Bible tells us where.

Over and over the Bible says we are to put our hope in the Lord. We put our hope in the fact that through Jesus Christ there is life after death, eternal life with God. We have a glorious inheritance waiting for us on the other side. That is where we can safely put our hope, in the Lord and in our eternal life with Him.

Jesus said to store up treasure in heaven, because nothing can happen to it there. And the same is true of our hope. If we don’t want our hopes to be dashed, we need to put our hopes in heaven, where they are safe.

Yes, there will always be disappointments here on earth. But we don’t have to be robbed of our hope, and the way to prevent it is to make this the foundation of our life, and say along with the Psalmist, “…You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.”*

Comments?

E-mail me: dougapple@wave94.com.

May God bless you today! With Apples of Gold…I’m Doug Apple.

* Psalm 25:5

Don’t forget Titus 2:13, “…we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ…”

Or First Peter 1:13, “…set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

This article originally published on August 1, 2007.

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