I think that somewhere in the course of my necessary processing and shedding of misaligned beliefs that I stopped hoping for the best. I didn’t start life that way. I used to be a perpetual optimist. I used to be a dreamer. I used to think that everything I prayed came to pass. But the last several years have felt like a series of knockouts. Unconsciously, it started to seem less painful if I just learned to live with the results of where I was. If I didn’t believe for anything, I wouldn’t be disappointed.
The line between trusting God and resignation is a very fine one. Hope is the space between and must be walked as intently as an acrobat on a tightrope. I’ve never been very flexible and I’m afraid of heights. So…that’s where I am right now. Stretching my stiff muscles and trying not to look down. Trying not to look back. Trying to look up.
Trust is about relinquishing control. And we all want control whether we’re self-aware enough to acknowledge it or not. It’s in our nature. Adam and Eve were the first to transfer their trust from God to themselves. They took the enemy’s bait, plucking power from the tree they didn’t plant or tend. They took a bite and immediately realized that control wasn’t all they thought it would be. We’ve been plucking and biting that apple ever since.
Handing control over is very hard for us. We don’t acquiesce easily, but trust isn’t just about letting go, it’s also about who we hand control to. And that’s the good and the bad news. The bad news is that none of us has ever found any person worthy of giving total control. None of us has ever been capable of adequately controlling anything for long. Even the best of us fail. Even the best of us have bad days. The best of us miss important things and eventually expire. So, trust and control continue to war in us. But the good news is that God isn’t like us or anyone else we’ve attempted to trust. He’s the only One worthy. He’s the only One really in control…wise enough and powerful enough to be. But the enemy of God’s children, never tires of offering doubt and encouraging control in its place. The offer is always shiny and juicy but has a bad aftertaste that turns your stomach.
So why do we keep taking the bait? Why do we keep reaching for the apple? Maybe hope really is the lifeline in between trust and resignation. Maybe doubt causes us to look down or back and lose our footing, and control is what happens when we let go of hope. Grasping for control changes our center-of-gravity and causes us to lose our balance. I think that if we could ever just stop reaching for that apple, we’d find a much safer and secure place to stand. But the God of hope has always known this, hasn’t He.
I’ve been wondering if I’ve resigned myself to no hope because my hope had been woefully misplaced for a long time. Had I used prayer as a way of control and then balked when I didn’t get what I expected? Have I put too much hope in what I wanted my life to be instead of trusting what God wanted it to be? Maybe this is one of my misaligned beliefs in need of an overhaul. Maybe what I intended to be hope in God was actually hope in what I wanted Him to do. But I think to hope in God is a completely different thing. I think to hope in Him is to believe for a greater level of glory but to also know that it might not look exactly like I wanted. That’s true trust. Maybe hope with no hope of control is a greater height altogether.