Posts Tagged ‘Workload’

This is a message of hope. But, if you feel hopeless, this word is going to fall on deaf ears. It will not take root in you. My charge to you today is… seek hope!

I am, for the first time, reading and studying the Torah: the first five books of the Bible from a Jewish perspective. I am realizing, more than ever before, that I do not know anything! I have become so familiar with the teaching I have received, that it has become like gospel to me… urgh! Everything I learned has been like different coats over the same thing. Never really getting to the foundation of it all! That is what the Torah has become to me. The foundation I have never had. Yes, I have read the first five books of the Bible and had them explained to me, but never understood the meaning from God’s chosen. The meticulous way they have passed down the understanding from generation to generation is amazing.
Here is a small sampling of what I am learning:

So Moses spoke thus to the sons of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage. (Exodus 6:9)

When Moses first came back to Egypt, the Israelites were hopeless. They were slaves and brick makers when Moses came peddling hope. Moses told them, “God has sent me to take you out of Egypt.” He showed them signs that convinced them. He gave them great hope that perhaps God was real after all. They began to believe that the God of their fathers cared about them. Moses raised their expectations of life. But when Moses went to Pharaoh to deliver this message, Pharaoh responded by increasing the workload of the slaves and making their lives even more difficult than before. After that the Torah says, “they did not listen to Moses on account of their despondency and cruel bondage” (Exodus 6:9).

“Don’t get your hopes up,” people say. Nothing is as painful as misplaced hope. The higher your hopes, the further they plunge. Sometimes it is hard to listen to hope because of our despondency. Having dared to hope in the past and having been betrayed by that hope, we resolve not to be hurt again. One way to avoid ever being hurt again is to refuse to hope. The pessimist is actually afraid of hope.

After facing disappointment, it is difficult to hope again. The pessimist claims that he is just being a realist, but despair is not reality. The heart of the pessimist is really saying, “I am comfortable in my despondent state. Please don’t raise me out of this state, because I can’t stand being teased with the chance of happiness. I would rather be unhappy than risk the chance of disappointment.”

Such an attitude, however, is the antithesis of faith. If we truly believe in God, we should be incurable optimists, living in a constant state of expectation. If God is on our side, we cannot lose. Read that again until you believe it!

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32)

When you know you cannot lose, you have nothing to fear. You don’t need to be afraid of disappointment. You don’t need to be pessimist to protect yourself. You can afford to be an optimist. The world needs more of those kinds of people. God wants to raise our expectations. He wants us to get our hopes up.

Hope is the main theme of the Bible. If we are hopeless, what are we saying to the world (who is watching you, by the way)? It is not easy to have hope, except that, if we are full of hope… we have help to grow that hope into full-blown optimism no mater what the circumstances of present, past, or future. Do you want to be that person… don’t you love to be around someone like that?

Hopeful… Kathy