365 Days of the Great Names of God, Day 339: Giver of Hope

Giver of Hope

"Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." (Psalm 42:5 NIV)

I love the little words of the Word.

"Yet" and "but" and "my," for starters.

And the little word we find here, in connection to hope: "put."

"Put" is an action word, a word of intention and direction...of location and situation. If I tell my daughter to put her lunch bag away, I'm asking her to place it in a specific correct spot.

God is the specific correct spot for us to place our hope.

When we put our hope in God, we are situating it on His holiness. On His "othernesss." On His perfection. On His completion. God is not like anyone else. I can say I "hope" something for someone, but if they put their hope in me, it can really only be the fingers-crossed, wishful thinking variety. I am fallible and incomplete and human. I will let them down. But to hope in God is to wait for the One who will lift us up.

When we put our hope in God, we are situating it on His omniscience. I might know a few things. But my knowledge is limited by so many factors. God is unlimited, and He has all the facts. He knows all. He knows about all.

When we put our hope in God, we are situating it on His power. God can act on what He knows. I might "know" all about how much a friend is hurting, for instance. But even as much as I know, I'm still limited in how much I can do about it. God's power matches His knowledge, and it is a perfect balance.

And when we put our hope in God, we are situating it on His excellence. God does all things well. No matter how much I might want something for someone...no matter how much I might know about what they're hoping for...no matter how much I might try to make their hope come true, I'm only at most going to be able to do my best. I might strive for excellence and might even hit it on a human level at one point, but it will probably be at the expense of excellence somewhere else. God, though, is excellent through and through, and only excellence flows out of Him.

"Put your hope in God," I say to my soul. (Maybe you'll want to say it to your soul, too.) "Situate your hope—your confident expectation—on your holy, omniscient, powerful, excellent God. He is exactly the right place for it."