Hope From Ashes

Read: Psalm 53; II Kings 4:1-7; Luke 9:10-17

God is so great. God can meet any need that we have. With all the perplexities we face in life today, we can know that God is in control, and we can place our hope in Him. We can even find and have Hope from Ashes.

II Kings 4:1-7 is a great illustration. Elisha confronted his situation where a woman was faced with the death of her husband, creating a bill she couldn’t pay, and placing her sons in jeopardy of becoming slaves. She had nothing—except contact with a prophet who knew how great God is.

Elisha gave her specific instructions for taking what she did have in the house and using it. Then she was to watch how God would multiply everything she offered. In fact, she kept filling her jars, and her sons kept getting more jars to contain God’s miracle, and then more oil was created. Elisha “The Man of God” told her to sell the olive oil and pay off her debts and she and her sons would live on what is left over.

Hope became reality! If you become so overwhelmed by the circumstances, you can get depressed, disillusioned and defeated. If you place your hope in God, He can make highways out of the desert, fill in the valleys, level the mountains, straighten the curves, and smooth in the rough places. (Isaiah 40:3-4)

Dr. Martin Luther King warned that we must learn “to accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.” Current situations are finite—God’s hope is infinite. Finite responses will ultimately lead to defeat—infinite responses will ultimately lead to having our cups overflow.

The only hope that is for certain is the hope that we celebrate in what God does through His Son’s life, death, and resurrection. Elisha gave the life lesson years before Jesus lived it out.

I heard two songs sung at church recently that give the message of hope. One is a new song “HOPE” sung by NewSong:

            I can live for 40 days and nights 

            Without a single bite to eat

            I can live for hours and hours

            Without a drop to drink

            And I can hold my breath

            For minutes at a time

            But I can’t live a second without hope in my life.

The other song is an old gospel hymn which says:

My hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.

I dare not trust the sweetest frame

but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.

On Christ the solid rock I stand,

all other ground is sinking sand.

Trust in Him and experience abundant HOPE emerging from the ASHES.