“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.”

Proverbs 13:12 ESV

I have considered this verse from many angles over recent years from different vantage points of my life. Hope is an integral part of my existence, to the point it is (literally) my middle name. In case I might miss the role hope plays in my identity and destiny, God made certain it was front and center. 

Hope can be a tricky thing. Emily Dickenson writes it is a thing with feathers, that perches in the soul- and sings the tune without the words – and never stops at all…

I agree that hope seems to sing a tune without the words. Often I find hope to be somewhat vague. Considering it is a thing that keeps us looking toward the future and we cannot be certain of much in the future in specifics we can hear the tune but have to leave some room for the exact nature of what it promises. 

However, I might disagree with her, that little bird perched in the soul never stops at all. It seems to me there are altogether too many people alive who haven’t heard the song of hope in quite some time. Hope can be an elusive thing that either makes life worth living in the roughest of storms, and in other cases brings about such heartache and disappointment to the point of heart sickness as the write of the Proverb shares.

Do we have a say in how we experience hope? 

Tim Keller says we do. I have come to agree.

The problem as I have seen it, is that, as Charles Spurgeon wrote: The Lord’s people have always been a waiting people. 

And so how do we as God’s people not live heartsick? Because what is waiting if not a deferment of the hope God gave us of his word and promises?

Some of you reading would insert here the clear and simple answer that we must of course remember that we are waiting on God, he is our portion and our cup after all! We put our hope only in him. Any good christian realizes this right? But how am I waiting on God exactly when I have him. He promises to never leave us, so he is always with us. Probably I’m supposed to sit in a contented peace with a saintly smile as I rest quietly and remember that Jesus says He is with us always even to the end of the age. Why leave the house? I have everything right here in my meditation room! 

It is a fine thing to say all my hope is in Jesus. But is it really? Why then do we all have times of disappointment and heartsickness because we have hoped for a good thing, and the good thing we believed for did not come? Is it because we are weak idolatrous christians who must want something more than only Jesus?? Can we decide to look only to Jesus and then voila we are hope filled creatures waiting eternally in gladness that we don’t hold the promises we hoped for? 

Is that what we’re asked to do? I think in our attempts to do this right we can trick ourselves by actually hoping for nothing at all and calling it hope in Jesus. I have been guilty of lowering the expectations in my heart in order not to become heartsick. Heartsick in disappointment is painful and hard. I make fun of the simple answers, but the truth is: this is not simple. Of course all our hope is in God, but what does that look like walking out a real life here on earth? 

Do I choose to live in a dreary existence here for now in some kind of black and white landscape in which I can put down my head and not expect too much from God right now because someday heaven will come and the movie will turn to technicolor and the streets will be yellow bricked in gold. Is that my hope? Do I believe deep down that if I can hold out until then and survive this dreary broken dark planet full of sad things in injustice, maybe find a moment here and there of joy or happiness tossed to me like crumbs among the suffering we are also promised, then I will be really glad because I have lowered my expectations so as not to be disappointed by hope. The thing with feathers seems to tease me with singing then fly away.

Maybe you cannot relate to any of this. But I am certain some can, because I’ve heard your hearts and we’ve talked about how to navigate this very real part of life. I think also the world who doesn’t know God has very little to hope in, because hope by it’s nature demands to exist in places where there is not evidence of the goodness we expect. And is it not always goodness we hope for? I know few (though they do exist!) who hope for suffering and trials. 

I think even those of us who have come to appreciate the deep work trials and suffering bring, we can count on them and don’t need to waste hope looking forward with song the next challenge that will threaten to suck us under the waves but for the grace of God who carries us through… No, most of us use hope toward the things that bring joy, victory, love, comfort, success, expansion, provision, miracles of healing and restoration and the like. These are things God has in store for his children! Hope in its very existence seems to me a bit of a miracle in itself. If you don’t know there is a God who loves us all actively working on our behalf how can one hope at all? If you have hope but think the universe is impersonal and random, I think you might be a little out of your mind myself. 

I have sat with Jesus in the deep heartsickness of disappointment more than once. What a grace to know that he waits for me as I go through these seasons, and he waits also with me. He doesn’t leave when I am slow to learn and grow. He walks with me to come through the proverb to a new understanding that will bring my life more freedom from fear- the fear of hope.

A few years later I see in hindsight some of the things I believed I had been promised beginning to fruit and harvest in my life. The years when all I had were dead little seeds in dark soil, sometimes dry soil in a dry time waiting on rain. As painful as waiting in brokenness has been at times, we were never idle. There was healing and strengthening going on even when it felt like I was languishing in a state that felt at the time near death of the soul. Living through challenges submitted to God’s plan even when pouring out my heart that I don’t like it, and it’s not what I’d have chosen, and I think it might kill me, but even so God I have to hold on to the truth that you ARE GOOD and I can TRUST you and so you do your will even if you have to tie me to the mast. I am willing often only because the alternative is unthinkable.

This process does help. The more “hope cycles” I go through the lighter I find myself in the process. We absolutely have to choose, and I can see there have been times in the past when I did not trust that God was going to lead me out in a way I could accept, and so I chose my own way and made a path for myself. Waiting seemed unnecessary when I could just go get something that seemed a lot like what I wanted. This always felt better right away, I often got what I was after, yet it only always made things worse in the long run. My life ended up so knotted up and tangled I had no hope on my own to sort it out. This is how I know the alternative is unthinkable; I have lived it. 

God spend some of these recent years untangling the mess, and even though he can miraculously zap things into order, it would not have benefitted me the way walking out the knots one after another together did. In truth if he simply zapped me a new happy life, I would have learned only these things: God alone can do this work and he still does miracles and he loves me. These are truths, so for those of you that God does the basically zap work on your life, I’m so happy for you, and occasionally a little jealous. I feel like I’ve never gotten the zap treatment and regularly I do wish for it. 

However, walking back the knots together over years added onto those basic truths with these: God wants me to learn and grow so I have the tools to not only change my choices going forward, but help others along the way. God loves to partner with us in our healing though we cannot do it without him, He seems to often prefer to do it together with us. God wants to show us truths and teach us about restoration and redemption and it takes time for us to internalize the lessons.

Today I have some things I believe God has revealed to me will be coming into my life. Dreams and purposes he is laying out in front of me that I hope to see materialize here, on earth not only in heaven. As I walked and prayed yesterday I considered a few of these significant “promises” that are the life changing kind. I have seen movement and evidence they are real from time to time that get me excited, though currently they seem to be on pause from my vantage point. Of course considering how quick moving my life tends to be (and God wired me that way so He often also moves quickly counting on my flexibility and eagerness to jump in…) being on pause for me can mean a matter of weeks that I’m seeing nothing change. In my head I know this is nothing in the eternal paradigm, and the real waiting on fulfillment is years in the making and could be years in the coming… Regardless, I know that though I can’t see movement at the immediate moment, this does not mean there is nothing happening. It means it’s happening on layers that I cannot see or. understand, and it’s a time of waiting until I see or hear direction to follow and move toward. 

I am getting better at waiting. I have come to see waiting not as sitting in an empty room with nothing but my thoughts being told to sit still until my name is called. [TORTURE] No, in the waiting I still have much to do, but it’s often not the exciting dream catapulting things I love. The things we do in waiting don’t always feel productive or adventurous. They are the things that continue to move me into alignment and position for the promises and continue to shape me into the person who can receive the promise without being destroyed by it.

“He may delay because it would not be safe to give us at once what we ask: we are not ready for it. To give ere we could truly receive, would be to destroy the very heart and hope of prayer, to cease to be our Father. The delay itself may work to bring us nearer to our help, to increase the desire, perfect the prayer, and ripen the receptive condition.”

George Macdonald

The words I remember hearing years ago when I was battling the heartsickness of hope deferred from Tim Keller asked me to consider what my hope is. He asked the question: when you are alone with your thoughts, seeking to find comfort or joy in the desires of your heart, pulling out the treasures to ponder, what is it you drift over? This tells you where your heart is and what your hope is in.

As I walked and prayed and thought about the promises I am holding on to, I found myself picturing for a few moments what my life as these things come to pass in the future might look like, but only as a kind of bridge in prayer to continue deeper in. There is a greater treasure in the knowing that there is a fair amount of mystery in what God actually plans to bring about and how it never quite looks like how we try to envision it…  (my vision of the promises are only seen darkly in part, because I can’t fathom the reality of what my Father is actually building out of my little currently hidden away in a back hollow in the unpopulated mountains of Virginia). I find myself moving past the vision or promises I believe are coming to a conversation about the one who is responsible for all good things I have now and will have to come. 

Today when I feel these thrilling plans are stalled and taking some time to appear, I find myself (not always, but more often) resonating with the second part of the proverb: a desire fulfilled is a tree of life. 

I find truly that I can talk to God about what He is doing and I know He watches over his word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12) — and so the thing He has set before me— they are already done. I understand now that I am simply walking out the process, the intensity and drama of the mystery. When the things come into clarity and begin to build out around me, I will never be able to walk in the mystery and drama I have today- which are often the best parts of the movie!

Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.

Elisabeth Elliot

We only get one chance to be on the front side of a promise! How do we steward the things we are believing God for?

The truth of my own heart is in the moment things are appearing and revealing I get really excited even when they are early and not clear yet. When time passes and I’m called to steward the promises in my heart and not let got of them, that’s when I begin to question and doubt… was it my imagination? Did I make that up? The age old question of the enemy of our hearts from the very garden: Did God really say…?

The problem is I know that I can still get off the rails overly eager to press God’s actual promise farther than he really did say. So I want to be able to check that and stand on what he really DID say not an interpretation of what I think it might include… So I have to trust him to help me. I have to bring those questions TO God and not get wrapped around the axle of my own overthinking. If Eve got a second chance (and am I not a daughter of Eve?) might she have thanked the serpent creature for bringing this tree thing to her attention, and waited till that evening and asked God?

God, I have this nagging question about the fruit from the tree we aren’t supposed to eat. Can you tell me again about the tree, and can we talk about why I find myself so drawn to it? What am I really hungry for? What have you given me that’s better? Will you help me understand and will you give me a better way of thinking? Will you replace the lie that this tree is going to make my life better with the truth that brings life?

I now ponder the things I believe for- not just things I think I would like to see, but things I have felt deep in my spirit God has been drawing me, preparing me toward and building in me with an eventual outward fulfillment to come- and as I walk with him I begin to discern the difference (though I’m not perfect in this so I leave room for the errors, and I give up the outcome trusting God’s vision will always be best). Now I ponder these things and I move them up another layer lifting them to God, as Elisabeth Elliot says- so that I don’t hope in the gifts, but consider the promised gifts and they become a conversation piece with the giver. 

This doesn’t mean I spend all my time talking with God about the things I think He has promised. That still focuses on hope being in the gifts… 

I remind myself while I talk to Him how much I trust his plans for my future, and how he is WORTHY of that trust, and what a miracle of grace it is that he has called me to his family and has a purpose and place for me! I thank him for continuing to walk with me and mold and shape me into a woman who can carry the authority and power and gifts he has for me in a way that brings him glory! I ask him to tell me the things he can for now about where we are headed and I get excited to know he has taken care of everything in advance! I do imagine what some parts might look like and ask God to help shape my vision to align with his- and to know when to rest in his plans and when to move and act. I ask for discernment when to press through challenges, and when to see that the door is wrong and only going to bruise me as I kick against it. I feed my heart with the truth that his goodness and mercy pursues me all the days of my life, and I can count on the story he is writing- when I look back- will be exactly perfect! I walk in peace knowing that I am terrible at running the universe but he is excellent at it! I hear him remind me that I cannot see all the twists and turns ahead, and so sometimes the path set out might not make sense at the time- but I can walk in confidence that his ability to keep me is greater than my ability to mess it all up and get lost. I don’t fear to consider things in front of me and wonder if they are part of the fulfillment – because if it turns out they are not, I know only that there is a better option still ahead. So I can let go of the short term sight I had and be flexible to keep my hands open to what IS for me. I can let go of the striving to make things happen, and allow my Father to give me my inheritance in the way and time he knows best. And best of all I can thank him for the current season I’m in because there will come a time when I look back on the simpler times and I want to be glad I basked in the gifts of each season, leaving none unopened for being in a hurry to get on to bigger things. 

Lest anyone thing I have this in the bag, I found myself just this morning in a moment of worship and calling out to God noticing a sadness layered down and brought things that I feel are taking long to come about up and handed them back to God. I do trust you. But sometimes I still get sad in the meanwhile, even with so much to be joyful and thankful for. I think there is longing in the waiting, which isn’t the same as heartsickness. I think the longing is like kindling on the fire that creates a more sweet moment when the desires ARE fulfilled. If we had instant gratification, we would never have the weight of the gifts, some of which ARE weighty in their glory and treasure. The ability to wait and hold onto promises – not allowing the birds to steal the seed we’ve been given – is part of the stewarding process that also adds so much depth of joy when the rain, the growth, and finally the harvest comes. 

Wildflowers are lovely… but I would like my life to look more like an oak tree in the end. I would like a depth of roots and strength of character that brings shelter to others.

So this is the hope I want for you today.

If you’ve shut down expectations and desire in fear of disappointment or a sense you cannot handle walking heartsick through life any longer, a dead heart with little hope is not a better way. Yet if you aren’t able to get honest, intimate, and real with Jesus about the truth of where your heart is, it will be impossible to change. I think it can be hard when we know the Sunday school answer so we can insist we’ve got it but our closed off hearts betray a deeper truth. The good news is He says that hope does not put us to shame! 

When our hope is set on the gifts and promises themselves we cheat ourselves, yet that does not mean we should not expect goodness and gifts from the one who loves us! No. We thrive when we have high expectations of the treasures and gifts God wants to pour over our lives and overflow to those around us… so it begins with the heart, and asking God what he has to say about our future, and how should we partner with him to come alive and begin to hope again in the plans he has for us. Full of mystery and wonder, but also a grand story he is more than able to write as we partner with him, in faith that we can trust him. Without fear!