Just a week before the explosion of fireworks on January 1st, 2016, my host parents shared with our team that, “God has spoken this new year to be one of hope!” Boom! Pow! Bam! Hope!
Suddenly, there were a multitude of hope-themed bible verses, and stenciled-cut and calligraphy painted “hope” signs EVERYWHERE, as if a gloriously relentless hope-bomb had exploded, leaving no surface untouched and no heart unaffected. Hope “popped!” and “fizzed!” like the confetti raining down from the starry sky on New Years night, anointing our heads with a beautiful rainbow of promises.
Y’all…This is the year of HOPE!
One of the many ways our host parents have implemented “hope” into their lives, is through the support group they host every Monday night, for families in our community that have suffered from drug and alcohol abuse. In the last couple of weeks, our team has attended the gatherings. During the hour we’re there, we pray for one another, listen to each other’s stories, and share testimonies of hope.
It’s surely one of the most beautiful things on earth, to witness a heart surrender it all to The Lord; to see drunken pursuits, and the weight of heavy drug bondage lifted from an addicts body. It takes one crazy act of vulnerability; they confess, “I struggle with this, and I can’t help myself.”
There’s weeks, months, even years of prayer poured into each persons struggles, and then you hear that first “pop!” and the confetti starts to appear, like rain after a drought. As families, these courageous people find Jesus in the chaos of their messes. They find his sacrificial love when they don’t deserve it. They find their door of hope in the valleys of the souls wilderness.
As I was praying for these families, and journaling thanks to God for “hope”, this poem sort of leaped into my journal. My hand may have been the vessel for its message, but it’s certainly not my words. If you’ve read my blog “Wildflower”, you may chuckle a bit, because you’ll notice the “wild” theme has continued, and I’m very okay with that.
So, from one wild thing to the other, I invite you into the wilderness with my support group friends, and I. This is the year of HOPE!
Hope in the Wilderness
I find you in my wilderness.
I find you in the dry heat of my soul,
in the places I fear to go.
You are riches in my wastelands.
Your going out is as sure as the fiery sunrise.
It’s rays pierce gold through my skin,
my cracked desert soil.
Oh Lord, that I would know you as the wild things do,
as the creatures that roam these plains,
howling lonely songs through the night.
They wait for their cries to be returned.
You find them in their aching.
You sing starving bones full.
“Press into the heat,” your melody sounds,
“In the Sahara is a door that wants to be found.
A crimson love is dying to flood your dry ground.
Press in when your feet burn,
for new life is dawning below.
Press into the bareness,
to be found clothed in hope unknown.
Press into the wilderness,
where my love groans.
I beg you, wild thing, press in.”
“And there I will make the valley of trouble a door of hope…Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”
Hosea 2:15a, 6:3
