It's that time again

Birthdays. what is it about birthdays that make you take stock of your last year of living life to see if it measures up to some kind of imaginary self measuring stick of loathing you just end up beating yourself with? (I know. it was a run on sentence)

In a few days I will have officially ended my 28th year of life on the earth and be officially labeled, "twenty-eight". What have I done in my twenty-eighth year? I sold all of my belongings (which, let me just tell you...was a hell of a lot), and I moved half way across the country. Something to be noted for sure. I discovered some intense realities of my brokenness. And have become more weak and humbled by my weakness then ever before.

All that to say: my glorious year is over.

I was asking Jesus today about disappointment and hope. And I was sincerely wondering why people hope in the first place. It has seemed to do me little to no good to hope for anything. I feel like the majority of the time it ends up being a complete blow out of a disappointment. Are my expectations too high? That's probably a given. But what should I do? Settle? Settle for the mediocrity that I hate about my life and deal with it. Sounds completely annihilating for my heart. I was wondering about that scripture that says something like, "and hope does not disappoint" and I decided that yes. Yes it does. It seems like that is all it does.

Then I heard a little voice in my head, "Hope in Me."

"Hope in Me"? What does that mean? I feel like I've forgotten the art of hoping in Jesus for the sake of Jesus. Maybe its not an art. Maybe its desperiation manifest through a manic activity such as hope, faith. What does it say? "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" Such a simple sentence, but there is so much that I don't get out of it. So it seems like you start with hope. "Hope in Me". Then from that substance (Jesus?) it becomes faith through Jesus. So maybe its this simple. Hope through Jesus is faith. He's like the great converter, the power adaptor if you will. and Jesus does not disappoint. It may seem like he does, but I found out a while ago that the reason I was so disappointed in God was because I had put a ton of expectations on him he never agreed to. So when he didn't do what I wanted him to, I got all huffy and disappointed. But then it comes to this: hope vs. expectation? Such a tangled web I live in.

"Hope in Me"