Ephesians 2:12–remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

What can “spark” joy and contentment without anything else changing in a Christians life, is the gratitude we can live with despite difficult times.  Before we knew Christ, what makes a difficult time turn into despair, is how much hope we had “tied up” in things going the way we desired…

What true hope in God does, is help us “allow” what is happening, to not define the plan and purpose God has for our lives.  Though we may never imagine living a certain way or without a certain person in our lives.  Hope in Christ, surpasses the plans we have surrounding that person or situation to be our confidence or hope…

This is why it is important that when the apostle Paul speaks about us “having no hope in the world without God”, that we really believe that hope isn’t “tied up” in our family, profession, and possessions being intact.  As difficult as loss can be, we eventually learn that people and things can’t give us the hope we need to live on in confidence…

The gospel at some point has to surpass what we have really placed our hopes in.  We are less prone to try and control the people and situations in our lives, when Christ is our hope. We realize that peace is Christ Himself, not our imagination of how things should be or turn out in our lives (Ephesians 2:14).

In His Love, Ld