Hope In Him Does Not Disappoint!
When I was a young boy I remember our summer vacation trips that we used to take to Minnesota to visit family. Our trip would start in El Paso, Texas and we would travel north until we would arrive at Canby, Minnesota. It was a two-day trip. We would leave early one morning driving no faster than 55 miles per hour, travel through New Mexico, through the corner of Texas and Oklahoma, and stop for the night shortly after entering Kansas, probably in Pratt, Kansas. Then the following day we would drive straight north through Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and then finally into Minnesota. During all those summer trips I don’t think that we ever went straight through to our destination without going on some kind of a detour. I see life a lot like that. We make plans for the future having a certain career, being with this person, in this amount of time, with this amount of resources only to find ourselves going in a direction that we never thought we would go, or find ourselves in a situation that we never imagined we would find ourselves in. We find ourselves in the map of life on some road that wasn’t on our original plans or charted course. I remember mom’s road map or atlas where she had marked with a pen the roads and highways that we would be traveling on. Without fail every summer we would take a detour due to road construction or flooding that had taken place.
In all those detours of life, it is real easy to get frustrated and angry and lose heart. Feel that you are the only one going through these things. Feel that somehow God must be taking a nap and can’t hear your prayers or that he has abandoned you. The worst thing that can happen to an individual is to lose hope, to lose faith. Romans chapter five states that difficulties and trials, maybe we could plug-in detours, produce perseverance, and perseverance brings forth character, and character produces hope! It goes on to say that hope in Jesus Christ does not disappoint! I think that some could easily see a detour in life as something negative that only takes you off your charted course and is a waste of time. I realize now that the detours that we took were there to keep us from harm. We didn’t know what was ahead, or why we had to take that detour, we just trusted that it was the better road. We may not see or know all the reasons as to why we have taken different roads in our life, but we should trust in God and know that he is in control and will never abandon us nor forsake us. He is teaching us new things, character traits, that we would have never learned if we had never persevered through our detours. After the detours of life we will have more hope in him, and for all who put their trust and hope in him will not be disappointed.
Glad to see that you are writing again. I really enjoyed this one as it took me down “memory lane”. You see, my family took many of the trips also when I was a child. No interstates or 4 lane highways.
Thank you Nick.
That hit me right between the eyes, because I never dreamed that I would be taking such a big detour.
I guess God has plans for me that I didn’t “plan” on having.
Karen