Because that is what hope is

It was a messy cold wintry morning when our daughter called on her way to work.  "Coldness!" she lamented in our conversation.

"Well, you know what my dad always said about it," I said.

"Deal with it?" she guessed, which I have to admit sounded a lot like my dad.

"No," I laughed, "actually, I can always remember him saying in the middle of those bitterly cold Chicago winters, "Every day is just one day closer to spring."

It was a word of hope when all looked like despair.  Look forward to spring.  It's coming again!

But the true essence of hope is not manifest in the future.  Hope is manifest in the faithfulness of God in our past and in our present.  Hope is secure in what He has redeemed and what He is redeeming.  Hope is seamlessly woven in the right now's of life.  It is not what is yet to come, but today.  Not just in the waiting for it, but through it.

I noticed over the weekend shy daffodils scrambling to the surface, their tender green sprouts standing in fierce defiance on a bleak black and white landscape, a visible reminder of God's faithfulness.

The world views hope as wishful thinking.
But hope in the Bible is not just a positive thought,
    but a reality on which
                  you can stake your life.

This is the day which the LORD has made.
Let us rejoice
       and be glad in it.

                     Psalm 118. 24