hope – Page 7 – Erin Ulerich

When It Feels Like the Darkness Is Winning

As I’ve watched the news, as I’ve lived in my own shoes, as I’ve walked beside friends, this question keeps coming:

Where is hope?

Where is hope when the world is going crazy, when things spin out of control, when it feels like the darkness is going to suffocate all good out of existence?

Current world events will cause us to ask this question. An honest look in the mirror will as well. In this broken world we struggle with addictions. We have loved ones caught in the snare of pornography, alcoholism, or in the cycles of anxiety and depression.

And many days it seems the darkness is winning. With each stumble, each setback, the darkness seems to close in, mocking our desperate prayers for hope, for deliverance, for change.

On these days, where is hope?

Hope doesn’t swoop in like Superman to save the day. It starts as a spark that grows over time.

I am a big fan of time.

I remember when the 10:00 news report was followed by the National Anthem and that ended the news for the day. In fact, it ended all television programming until early the next morning.

Hours of wonderful silence followed.

And that silence that gave people time. Time to think, to cool off, to rest. Time to allow ideas and thoughts to marinate. Time for people to figure out what they really thought about issues.

When it feel like the darkness is winning we tend to react, and more often than not, fear and anger win the day. Fear and anger drive out hope and replace it with hopelessness. “Hopelessness produces a refusal to see the potential of a new, bright, and good day… ” (page 86, The Healing Path) When fear and anger are driving, and hopelessness is thriving, we aren’t at our best.

Time also gives a chance for hope to grow.

Not a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-for-the-best kind of hope, but a hope that “enables us to walk bravely into the future, confident things can be better than they are today.” (The Healing Path, Dan B. Allender)

And we need hope because we are raising children who will be the next leaders, voters, the next people of this world. Our kids need to see us fighting for hope because hope is so very important. Hope allows us to be courageous and compassionate and I believe that is the kind of people our world needs.

Hope clings to the belief that this is not the end. God will work. Good will come from this. “The quintessential cry of hope is found in the remark Joseph made after experiencing devastating physical, sexual, and emotional abuse: “God turned into good what you meant for evil.” (Genesis 50:20, NLT)” (The Healing Path)

I believe that the more we fight for hope, the more we will see sparks of hope grow into a flame. Fighting for hope will help us communicate to each other with respect, even those who are on opposing sides of an issue.

So instead of shouting across the canyon at the spouse who is struggling with an addiction, or at the person whose lifestyle looks different from ours, or at people who drink out of red cups at Christmas, or at people who say open the borders, or close the borders….

Fighting for hope will enable us to sit down together, listen to each other, wade through the fear and anger, and find an answer for a new, bright, and good day.

Keep fighting for hope, dear friend. It is important for our lives, our world and our future.

It’s Good To Be Alive

This song says it all. It IS good to be alive!

We Were Made for Remembering

The interstate was packed with people trying to get home after a long day of work. I was one of those people, but my mind wasn’t on driving. I was struggling with the loss of a friendship, the sting of betrayal, and the fear of being alone. As the road curved a gorgeous sunset filled my windshield, breaking through the gloomy thoughts surrounding me.

And with the sunset, a spark of hope broke through the darkness.

“Even if I can’t rely on their faithfulness, I can rely on yours,” I told the Lord. “Every time I see a sunset, it will be a reminder that your faithfulness never ends, that your faithfulness stretches to the heavens, that you have promised to never leave me.”

And whenever I see a sunset, I am reminded of God’s faithfulness and I feel an overwhelming sense of being loved and held by God.

The sunset helps me remember the depth of God’s faithfulness. And it is good for me to remember, because I easily forget.

As my children grow, I want them to remember the same truths we’ve talked about in this 31 days of writing: You are loved. You are not alone. You have purpose.

Made to Love by TobyMac speaks these truths with a really catchy tune. I love hearing my children belting out the chorus.

I was made to love You, I was made to find You,

I was made just for You, Made to adore You,

I was made to love, and be loved by You.

You were here before me, You were waiting on me,

And you said You’d keep me, Never would You leave me,

I was made to love, and be loved by You.

I wanted us to remember these truths, so I filled canvases with these words and let the kids loose with the paint.

God reminds us of these truths throughout His Word, from Genesis to Revelation. He says them over and over because He knows we are easily distracted, easily discouraged, and likely to forget these beautiful truths: You are loved. You are not alone. You have purpose.
These truths remind us that we are His.

We Were Made for Meaning

Late one night when the noises in the dorm rooms around me faded, I sat on my floor asking big questions. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life?

It was my Junior year at Belhaven College. Only one more year until graduation. Shouldn’t I know what I wanted to be when I grew up by now?

In those quiet moments I read 2 Corinthians 5:14.

For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if One died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that those who live should live no longer for themselves, for but Him who died for them and rose again.

From this verse I gathered that I was supposed to live for Christ and not for myself.

But what does it mean to live for Christ?

If I had written this post on that night twenty-something years ago, I would probably have written a list, a “10 Ways to Live For Him” that would have sounded very spiritual and pretty near impossible. I’m sure an hour-long devotion at 5:00 am before your big toe hits the floor would have made the list.

Thank goodness blogging hadn’t been invented yet.

The truth is that “living for Him and not for ourselves” will probably look different for each of us. It even looks different in each season of our own lives. Living for Him may involve caring for your mother or father while they struggle with cancer or Alzheimer’s. It may involve changing 1,234 diapers in a season of caring for babies. It may mean waiting. Waiting for a relationship, waiting for a child, waiting for an answer. Waiting and clinging to His promises.

But behind the scenes “living for Him and not for ourselves” looks pretty similar in each of our lives. Living for Him involves getting to know Him and learning to hear His voice.

We get to know Him by talking to Him through prayer, by reading His Word, by being part of a community of people who are also living for Him, a place where our faith can be encouraged and strengthened.

The word for compels is a Greek word that means to hold together, to compress, to arrest. The love of Christ holds us together.

The word compels mean to force or drive, especially to a course of action.What action does the love of Christ drive us to?

When we grasp what He has done for us, the love of Christ toward us drives us to live for Him, and not for ourselves. We live for Him in response to His love for us.

My 10 ways – list-making-college-self lived for Him in order to earn His love. What a waste. The glorious truth is that We already have His love! The life He lived and the death He died is proof of His love for us. There is nothing to earn, but plenty to be thankful for.

In the process of living for Him we get to know Him. As we get to know Him we grow closer to Him. And no matter what our season of life looks like on the outside, growing closer to Him brings meaning to our life.

We Were Made For Community

The word community could mean a group of people who live in the same place or who work together, people who have common interests, people who think alike.

This is not the type of community I want to talk about.

To commune means to converse or talk together, usually with profound intensity, intimacy, etc.; interchange thoughts or feelings. 2. To be in intimate communication or rapport (Thank you, Dictionary.com)

ity is a suffix used to form abstract nouns expressing state or condition.

Commune-ity – The state or condition of being in intimate communication or rapport.

Now, this is what we were made for.

This was my first commune-ity. These are the friends who knew me. The ones I played with, fought with, and leaned on. With these girls I learned that friendship means apologizing, and forgiving, and speaking the hard truth even when no one is listening. These are the first friends who became “my people.” They taught me the importance of friendship and the richness of knowing and being known.

Of course, we were just kids. We didn’t know we were forming the building blocks of friendship in each other. We didn’t know we were teaching each other about commune-ity so that we would know how to find friends throughout our lives.

These are the girls I played Charlie’s Angels with on the third grade playground, giggled over crushes with in Junior High, and struggled with life, relationships, and Chemistry in High School. These were my people for late night talks, school projects (THAT time line in 10th grade Humanities Class), MTV (Thriller and Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You). We went to scary movies and made each other laugh during the scariest parts. We were silly and obnoxious and we loved each other fiercely.

Then we lost touch for over 25 years.

Could we reconnect? We had missed so much in each other’s lives: marriages, divorce, children, mommy moments, miscarriages, marriage struggles.

Had we missed too much, I wondered. Will the gap be too wide?

As we planned our mini-reunion, I found letters written during those lost years. Letters that helped us through the first lonely months of college, letters that grew sporadic as marriage and kids and careers filled our lives. And these letters poured over with life-giving words.

You are a blessing. I am praying for you.

I know you can succeed. Don’t throw away the abilities and opportunities that God gives you.

I’m so thankful for your friendship.

And when the four of us finally re-connected, those words hadn’t changed.

Though years had gone by, and there were many details to fill in, our heart for each other hadn’t changed.

We were made for this type of community, for knowing and being known. We all need “our people” in our lives. People who know who we are in the depths of our being. People who love us for our strengths and weaknesses, who encourage and support us. People who are good for our heart, and refreshing for our soul.

We Were Made For Hope

Here we are! Day 22 of Truths That Make Life Beautiful.

Your “likes” and your comments have encouraged me to keep plugging away at this series. (Thank you!) I’ve enjoyed walking with you through the first two truths: You are loved and You are not alone.

I believe that the more we allow these truths to soak into our bones and permeate our lives, the more readily we will believe the third truth: You have purpose.

You have purpose. You matter. You were made for wonderful things. Let’s explore a few of these wonderful things in the remaining days of this series.

We were made for hope.

The Hope We Were Made For And The Hope We Settle for.

Even When We Feel Helpless, We Are Not Alone

We sat in the school hallway with 30 other people, waiting for the tornado.

I tried to keep conversation light to mask my own worry. Anderson played a board game nearby with a friend. Maggie watched Frozen with a group of girls huddled around a tablet screen. But Ellen stayed by my side and asked the hard questions.

“Is the tornado close?” she whispered. I put my arm around her as we leaned against the wall. “It’s about 10 minutes away. You don’t have to worry. We are in a safe place. We are in the safest place we can be. ”

“Will it hit us?” She asked.

“I don’t know, sweetie, but we are in a safe place if it does.”

“Mama, do people die in tornados?”

In the 25 zillion parenting books I’d read, not a single book had a chapter on Speaking Truth During Tornados. I was not going to lie to my child, and yet I didn’t want to multiply her fears.

“Sometimes that happens, sweetheart. But we are in the safest place we can be right now.” I kept using the word safe hoping it would make her feel safe.

The wind howled. The rain pelted. And my husband walked past us, a grim look on his face. Ellen and I watched as he wrapped an extension cord around the handles of the double doors at the end of the hallway – the doors that could fly open if a tornado hit.

I felt the muscles tighten in Ellen’s little body.

“Are we going to die?” she whispered, her voice trembling in my ear.

Fear. Pure fear.

These circumstances were totally out of my control, and my child knew it. She immediately felt alone and helpless, and I could identify with that.

It is not unusual to feel alone when we feel helpless.

God knows what it is like to live in this broken world. He knows that we will face circumstances that we can’t change or control. And He knows we need Him to remind us that we are not alone.

Do not fear, for I am with you. Isaiah 41:10

His Word gives us assurance of His presence. We are not alone, because He is with us.

I did not want my child to feel alone, because we were not alone or abandoned.

The truth was that the tornado could hit. We could be injured or die. And God would still be good. He would still use it in our lives for something beautiful.

But how could I explain this to my 6 year-old who was gripped with fear, when I don’t even fully understand it myself? I’ve seen God bring beauty from bad things in my life. I’ve seen Him work in people’s hearts through the most difficult and horrible circumstances. I don’t understand it, but I trust His hand.

I pulled Ellen into my lap, held her, and said, “I’m not sure what will happen. But I know that God will do what is best, and I trust Him.”

The tornado went over us without touching down and Ellen and I whispered prayers of thankfulness for His protection.

God did protect us that day. But even if He had allowed the tornado to hit, it wouldn’t have been because He took His Hand away from us. As His children, we are secure in the palm of His Hand. He is with us.

I’m still not sure how to convey this complicated truth to my children. Maybe it’s enough to teach them to trust Him, because He is with us, even when we are sitting in the dark.

Even When We Feel Alone, We Are Not Alone

Flashpoint is a television series about a fictional elite tactical unit called the Strategic Response Unit (SRU). They are an emergency response team. In each episode, this team faces a threatening situation that requires them to swing into action. Often, when the negotiator of the group talks to the person creating the emergency, he tries to figure out what brought this person to this point of extreme action. And when he gets behind the reason for the extreme emotions, I’ve noticed that he says. “I get it. You aren’t alone.”

Through very intense, fictional situations, Flashpoint fleshes out this truth: When we feel alone, we make very bad decisions.

In my book, Angkura: The Fight for Hope, the main character is a 16 year-old who feels alone. And she makes a poor relationship choice because she doesn’t want to feel alone. But throughout the story, as she learns how deeply she is loved, and that she is not alone, she begins making choices motivated by courage instead of fear – the fear of being alone.

We all have a fear of being alone, of being misunderstood, of not being valued, of feeling disconnected.

And when we feel those things, we often make our own poor choices in order to avoid feeling those things. We may seek to numb the pain, or we grasp at any relationship that we think will help us not feel that way.

This is the basic, broken, human condition.

The beautiful, glorious truth is that we are not alone. We are of great value to the God who formed us, and we are only disconnected as long as we keep Him at a distance.

It isn’t surprising that the enemy of our souls works overtime to make sure we feel alone. We were created for fellowship with God and with other people, and that is where the enemy strikes.

It’s a very effective strategy. And we can only fight his strategy with truth.

Psalm 139:1-18 paints a beautiful picture of the way God knows us and cares for us, intimately, gently, completely.

O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
    and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
    behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
You hem me in, behind and before,
    and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
    it is high; I cannot attain it.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
    Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
    If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
If I take the wings of the morning
    and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
    and your right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
    and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
    the night is bright as the day,
    for darkness is as light with you.

For you formed my inward parts;
    you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
    my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

I get it. You are not alone. These words are such a comfort, and there is good reason for this. We weren’t meant to be alone. And we aren’t.

Have You Been Introduced?

The way we meet God seems backwards to me.

We are introduced to God through someone else. It’s amazing that God trusts this introduction to us, especially when we are so likely to misrepresent Him. It’s really an important introduction.

Our introduction to God is important because the way we view God and the way we think He views us are important. What we believe about these two questions influence our life: “How do I view God?” and “How does God view me?” Our answer to these questions determine our reaction to God’s words of “I am with you.”

I know people who are convinced God is out to get them. I know others who keep God at a distance because they are sure He looks at them with a disappointed frown. These people might say that God is good, loving, and forgiving, but their life shows what they deep-down, really believe. They don’t draw comfort from God’s words of “I am with you” because they don’t believe that God is for them.

I don’t remember my very first introduction to God. I remember the Gideons coming to our school and handing out New Testaments, I remember going to church with my grandmothers when I was younger, and I remember Sunday School at their churches. I remember going to retreats and lock-ins with my friends at their churches. My mother took us to church when I was in middle school, which was the first taste I had of being part of a community. I have no doubt that the seed of faith was planted and watered in the midst of all of these memories. And I am sure that these experiences played a part in me seeking out a relationship with God when I was in the ninth grade.

But the most in-depth, real-life conversations I had about God was with my tennis partner, Nona. I was a new believer, hungry to know God, and Nona spent time talking with me, answering my questions, and pointing me back to Him. (Just in case you don’t remember high school, there are LOTS of things happening that can make you question God’s presence, His care, His involvement in our every-day circumstances. AP Biology is only one of those things.)

We talked after tennis practice, often until dark, and the sunsets over the cotton and soybean fields were spectacular. I realize that the sun sets every night, but it felt like God painted sunsets with especially vibrant colors on the nights we sat on the tennis courts talking about Him. It felt like He painted them just for us.

I am so thankful for the way I was introduced to God. Since then, there have been other people in my life who have presented God’s holiness in a way that communicated Him as stern and distant. They focused on our sinfulness and unworthiness without mentioning the abundance of His lavish love or the bridge of His amazing, life-giving grace. I realize now that this slant probably had more to do with their view of God and their life-story, but it made an impact on me as a new believer.

God gives us the great privilege of introducing others to Him. The best introduction points them to His Word, because that is the place where who God is can be clearly seen. He is holy, and we are sinful. That is true. He is also relentless in His love for us and in His mercy toward us. His Word is more than a book. It is God’s words of this is who I am, this is how much I love you, and this is what I’ve made you for.

We find life in the pages of His Word because we find Him.

His Face is Toward Us

When Anderson was in first grade he lied to his teacher. When he got home, we had a little talk.

“Each time you lie, you are putting a brick between you and Mrs. Henderson.” I told my little boy. “The more you lie, the more bricks pile up. At some point you won’t be able to see her any longer because the bricks will separate you.”

His lower lip trembled. “But I don’t want to be separate from her. How do I take the bricks away?”

“When you ask for forgiveness, the bricks will crumble.”

Anderson loved Mrs. Henderson. The next morning he asked for her forgiveness and stopped that brick wall from ever beginning.

There are also bricks that block us from a relationship with God. The bricks may be the thought that God will make us change, or that there will be no fun in life, or the idea that a relationship with God has too many rules to follow.

These bricks distract us from the real problem. Because even when God works in our heart to draw us toward Himself, we find that there is a stronger brick wall behind the bricks we’ve put up. God is on one side of the brick wall and we are on the other.

If this was the end of the story, this would be tragic. But stay with me, there is a larger story going on here.

This wall was put into place way back in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. It was put there by the enemy to place a permanent wedge between God and His creation, to nullify His plans to love and to bless His creation.

The enemy laid the foundation for this wall by layering bricks of doubt, “Did God really say…”, and mistrust, “God knows that when you eat of it then you will be like Him”. If sin begins by our refusal to believe what is true about God, then this was the birthplace of every sin known to man.

But the enemy did not count on the mercy of God. The enemy had no way of knowing what God was willing to do to break through that wall of darkness, mistrust, and doubt. God tore down that wall through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why would He do that?

Because of His great love for us. The love of God is shown in this, that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. While that wall was still there, before we ever searched for Him, He searched for us.

He did not create us to be alienated from Him. He made us for life with Him.

His kindness leads us to repentance. His kindness causes us to want change in our life.

His Face is toward us and all His Paths are steadfast love and faithfulness.

He answers our heart’s cry with gentleness and grace.

And he will disintegrate any layer of bricks to win your heart and mine. His love is just that great.

You are loved. You are loved!

Say it. Believe it. Live it.