Where my HOPE is built - Janet Harville

“My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less

Than Jesus Blood and Righteousness.

I Dare Not Trust the Sweetest Frame

But Wholly Lean on Jesus Name.”*

 I have been immersed in the word HOPE these past few months as our Sojourners Sunday School Class has studied about “Sustaining Hope,” using the International Bible Lessons for Christian Teaching, commonly called The Quarterly.  I found such a blessing as we read the words of the Old Testament Prophets telling God’s beloved people that even though they were struggling with despair, disappointment, disillusionment, they must not give in to a distorted view that their Creator had abandoned them.  God had a long-range plan that would benefit them, their offspring, and ultimately, the world.

I have been blessed to use The JEWISH STUDY BIBLE, that I confiscated from our Church Library, and the translations of familiar passages in our Bible from The Tanakh have excited me so much.  Listen to these words Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:21-23:

                    “This do I call to mind,

                    Therefore I have hope:

                    The Kindness of the Lord has not ended,

                    His mercies are not spent.

                    They are renewed every morning—

                    Ample is your grace!”  

I would say that as Christians we have come to know that great abundance of God’s love in Jesus, and our hope is built on that  foundation, as the hymn says, of His blood and righteousness.  I can’t understand it but I can enfold myself with the knowledge that

                            “When he shall come with trumpet sound,

                             O may I then in him be found!

                             Dressed in his righteousness alone,

                             Faultless to stand before the throne!”*

          Let us pray that God’s ample grace will be acknowledged by ALL people.  Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

*My Hope Is Built” taken from The United Methodist Hymnal, pg. 368