No Reason Not To

Life has lots of hoops, hurdles, detours to jump through, over and around. Over time, we get tired and come up with reasons not to do things, or even hope for things. We might have reasons why we should keep doing and hoping, but the reason not to seems more powerful, ominous, even if more abstract and unnamed. It stops us before we start, this unnamed reason, because it sets us onto a path of fear and anxiety. We can't see where it goes, we don't know how long it will take, we hear growls in the forest and imagine wild beasts ready to tear us apart. This is the opposite of the way we are instructed to think about things in the Bible. We are instructed to put our hope in God, to not worry about our lives, to think about good reports. We have no reason not to hope for God to bless us, to help us, to heal us, to save us, to deliver us from imaginary wild beasts. We have no reason not to hope that the cancer will go away, that we will have enough money to stay independent, that our children will be successful, that we will be useful to others. We can look back at how far we have come, the hoops and hurdles jumped, the detours navigated, the blessings from every event in our lives that opened us up to people and places that have inspired and encouraged us. We have no reason not to hope, only reasons to keep hoping, in a God who loves us all.