Keeping your head up is difficult. When there’s so much to worry about, so much to do, so much to figure out, it’s easy to sit down, squeeze your eyes shut, and wish there was a simpler way.

There are times where life is flowing along peacefully and there’s a lot of joy and peace and contentment, but there are some times when the opposite is true; when it seems like absolutely nothing is going as planned and the waves are getting bigger and the sky is getting darker and you’re frantically just trying to keep your head above water as you try to find something to grab a hold of.

This is what life seems like without hope.

If we could catch hope in a jar like we used to catch butterflies in nets as kids, we could store up hope on our shelves and pull it out when we need it. It would be available whenever we wanted, we would not have to go and search for it.

But hope is not like catching butterflies in nets, it’s more like trying to grasp for a cloud. When life is difficult, hope seems to be out of reach, much too high for us to grab hold of when the ground underneath is unstable and crumbling.

However, just because hope is out of our reach, does not mean is unattainable. In fact, it’s very available to us. The death and resurrection of Christ, a replacement for us because of our sinfulness, brings unending hope. The world can get pretty bleak and there’s often few things to grab hold of. Some things seem sturdy enough to keep us afloat, but eventually every each of these fails except for the firm love and grasp of Jesus. Therefore, we are urged to put all our hope in Him.

“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