What does this have to do with us? Simple. Hope.
If you simply look at a mustard seed, you may wonder just how something that tiny could even survive let alone be transformed into the kind of plant it is. Looking at the mustard seed, we surely can discover hope. Hope is a prized commodity. Without hope, our spirits will certainly fail. Hope leads us ever forward and aids in establishing trust.
Too often, however, we do not define or identify what hope truly is. I'm not talking about the kind of hope that you may have that tomorrow will be sunny and mild for a planned picnic. That is one form of hope but it is not spiritual hope, rooted firmly in God.
Hope, spiritual hope, is not just a strong desire for something. Instead, it is a firm belief in someone, namely God. When we truly believe in God and believe His teachings, we find the roots of hope, true hope. This hope propels us forward in our relationship with God and as we grow closer to Him, we find that it is this hope that fuels the fires of intimacy. We come to trust in Him and may even reach a point where we depend upon Him for everything simply because we know that God does not break His promises to us.
That is why we must pray every day. Without prayer, hope dies. Without communication with the Father, our spirit loses its energy and resigns itself to a mundane existence.
It is so easy to lose hope when things do not go our way. This is mostly because most of what we call hope is actually something like a wish list. We want desperately for this list to come true and wait anxiously for the day that this has been verified.
We may lose hope because of a number of things. We may have just lost a loved one and feel empty without them. We might play over and over again in our minds the last time we saw them or the last conversation we had with them. We may lose hope at this point because our sadness overwhelms our sense of judgement and perspective.
But focusing on the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, with an ever open heart to the Holy Spirit, we can keep hope alive even in the most dire of circumstances. It is hard to do and Satan makes it no easier with his lies and deceitful ways.
All of us have a mustard seed inside. It is the seed of hope which will lead us to love and the long journey back to the Father. We place our trust in our Creator and find that in doing so, our intimacy with God, His Son, and Holy Spirit, grows all the more intimate. In turn, our relationships then begin to cement for the first time even though a given relationship may be years old.
Nurture your mustard seed so that the glimmer of hope that we all experience may be replaced with the certainty that God loves us and guides us every step of the way through life. We must have hope! We cannot allow it to die within us for if it does, our spirit will soon die as well, leaving us a hollow shell and a life filled with meaningless actions.
Hope! Trust in God. Love Him with all your heart and mind. And that hope will grow into a lifelong love affair with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
