Hope. Process. Sum

I just left church.

Pastor Jimmy talked about Hope, The Process and the Sum at the End.

I feel like the hardened scab on my heart has been picked at.

He was talking about things we go through and how we focus on the Sum or the outcome that we’re wanting, but how there’s a process to everything. Also, he of course talked about how a hope deferred makes the heart sick. Basically, he was reading my mail.

He stirred up emotions in me that I haven’t felt in a while. He was talking about Hope in a different way than our culture views it. Today the word Hope is more like the word Wish. I Hope for something/I Wish for something. He was saying that the word Hope in the Bible is the stuff Faith is made out of it. It’s more like Expect.

He talked about how sometimes when our Hope/Expect is delayed over a long period of time that it can feel frustrating. Yeah, I agree.

He told a personal story of how him and his wife had been married for a long time when they decided that they wanted to have a child of their own. His wife couldn’t have babies anymore so they began praying for a way to adopt a baby. He started ticking off the years: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years and nothing. No baby. He even began working in a place with fosters kids and adoptions going on around him and still no baby. 5 years and no baby.

As he started ticking off the years I felt my heart breaking. The foundations of my “doing okay walls” began to shake in it’s weak foundation. I had a desire to scream out that I knew what he was talking about.

Year six came around for him and he spoke about being able to be in the room when his daughter that he was going to adopt was being born. It was so beautiful. They had waited six years for her and today she turned 9 years old.

Hope. Process. Sum.

Today was the first day of the series he’s starting about Exodus and the “process.” I think he said it’s the first of the next five weeks. I guess I have a choice of holding my hand over the wound of my heart and just go through the motions of church for the next five weeks or I can allow Hope to be restored again in the area of Miles’ healing.