Hope
“For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.” (Jer 29:11)
Hope. I’ve been thinking a lot about hope these past few weeks, and this verse keeps coming to mind.
Hope speaks to the truth that God has a plan for me and reminds me that I can trust that His plan for me is good.
Hope is a gift from God that draws me closer to him, and where God is, there is peace and joy.
The opposite of hope is despair. Despair is a delusion from Satan that leads me to believe God does not have a good plan for me or for the world. It is an attempt by Satan to steal my hope, peace, and joy.
We are currently experiencing an epidemic of despair in the US. While deaths from other causes such as cancer and heart disease are dropping, deaths of despair—suicide, drug overdoses, alcoholism—are rising so quickly that whole demographic groups now have a lower life expectancy than just a few years ago.
I hear the despair in daily conversations with friends and family when discussions turn into litanies of what is negative and ugly in the world. Yes, there is misery and sin, but “where sin increases, grace abounds all the more.” (Rm 5:20)
I’m guilty myself of getting this proportion backwards and spending more time thinking about other people’s sins than praising God for my many graces.
Despair is not part of God’s good plan, but it is definitely part of Satan’s evil one. For Lent, I’ve been challenged to give up social media and un-work-related online activities.
Doing so has given me a chance to regain some perspective and I’ve become convinced that one of the ways Satan is sowing despair is news media.
News outlets and online sources continually feed us an addictive stream of stories about the ugly, the negative, and the outrageous. Before we know it, we’ve spent hours dwelling in dark places.
But this is not what God asks us to dwell on. “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Phil 4:8)
With so much information and media constantly vying for our attention, how do we sort out the good from the bad? God tells us to look at the fruits. “You will know them by their fruits… every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit.” (Mt 7:16-17)
In Galatians 5, St. Paul speaks of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. He also speaks to the works of the flesh (Satan) and lists, among others, enmity, strife, anger, and dissension.
We can begin to sort out our media by asking ourselves, is this leading me toward more peace and goodness and hope, or is this leading me to anger, outrage, dissension, and despair?
In Stephen Covey’s book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he introduces the concept of our circle of influence. Things that are in our circle of influence are things that we have direct control over. These are the materials that God has given to us to use to build up the Kingdom of God. Things that are outside our circle of influence are things we do not have control over.
Jesus had a name for dwelling on things that are outside of our control. He called it “worrying” and he was not a fan. “Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life span? Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself.” (Mt 6:27, 34)
God will only ask us to do things that are in our circle of influence. To spend our time dwelling on things outside of our circle of influence is to waste our time and energy on things that are not building the kingdom of God. And perhaps that is exactly what Satan wants.
We may be worried (oh, that word again) that we will miss out on an important piece of information that we need to protect our families.
When the Flood was coming, God made sure that Noah knew about it. He gave Noah clear directions about how to protect himself and his family. Noah trusted that God had a plan for his welfare, so he listened and obeyed and was saved.
Noah was not saved because he spent hours scrolling online alt-weather sites or reading articles like, “10 Important Steps You Need to Take NOW to Prepare for a Disaster.”
Do we trust that God wants to protect our family even more than we do? Do we trust that God is capable of letting us know when he needs us to take action? That he can do so through people and circumstances that honor Him?
I believe God is calling us to action, not doom-scrolling.
In his book, “Holy Moments”, Matthew Kelly challenges us to make every moment a holy moment.
“A Holy Moment is a single moment in which you open yourself to God. You make yourself available to Him. You set aside personal preference and self-interest, and for one moment you do what you prayerfully believe God is calling you to do.” (p. 23)
Picture how many people could be fed, housed, clothed, given water and shelter, given hope, love, and human kindness if we spent our time and energy on doing the good we were capable of doing.
No wonder Satan is desperate to distract us. And, by focusing on doing the good within our control, we fix so many of the larger issues that we’ve been spending so much time worrying about.
Rome was conquered for Christ, because the early Christians heroically nursed their neighbors through plagues and other miseries, not because the Christians spent their time complaining about the depravities of the Caesars.
God has a plan for us, a plan for our welfare, a plan of hope and not despair, a plan to build the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.
He’s willing to spend time with us every day telling us about it.
Are we willing to turn off our screens and listen?
PAM THOME
Pam Thome is a wife, mother of five, and a disciple of Jesus trying to grow into an apostle. She has worked on the space shuttle program as an electrical engineer, on the night shift as a factory engineer, on a keyboard as an award-winning technical writer, and as a home educator at the dining room table. Her journey into the Catholic Church started when she married into a beautiful Catholic family and was clinched when she realized she couldn't out-argue St. Thomas Aquinas. She was welcomed into the Church in 1997 at Prince of Peace Catholic Community in Houston where she continues to volunteer in various ministries. She loves a good IPA, dreads cleaning house, and can't put down a mystery novel, even a bad one.
Favorite Scripture: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28)