Everything.

I attended a banquet on Friday night that was focused on inner-city ministry in Milwaukee.  It was a time to celebrate so many of the cool things that a group called "Here's Life Inner City" have been seeing God do in the last year (check it out here: http://www.hlicmke.org/).  I was so thankful to have been there.  The theme is what caught my eye, and perked up me ears...

Hope changes everything.  

I'm taking a class this semester in Romans, and in one of the dictionaries I had to read this past week, I stumbled across this blurb by Colin Brown.  It blew me away.  (And the "for the moment" part is IN the quote...)

"New Testament hope is patient, disciplined, confident waiting for and expectation of the Lord as our Savior.  To hope is to be set in motion by the goal ahead, awaiting in the movement towards the goal.  It demonstrates its living character by the steadfastness with which it waits, by hypomone (Greek for patience, art), by the patient bearing of the tension between the now, as we walk (for the moment) dia pisteos, (by faith), and our future manner of life.

This waiting is something active, for it involves overcoming.  Although the waiting may be painful, this too is recognized positively as travail which announces "rebirth".

Therefore those who hope are comforted and confident.

Hoping is disciplined waiting."

Tension.  Motion.  Walking.  God's living character...these words all struck me this week in such a deep way.  

I'm two days away from my one-year anniversary.  I decided not to have a party on the 31st because it's Halloween, which I always forget.  The anticipation is not as bad as I thought it was going to be - this week was not difficult to get through, and I don't think next week will be either.  I'm such a roller coaster.  I did a lot, and my foot was able to keep up (this time around). 

But, you know, even if it hadn't, I am still clinging to that promise.  Even if my arthritis continues to progress, and even if I can't run anymore, and even when I have to give up all of my cute shoes so I can wear an orthodic, and even if I will always feel the pain I feel, I will cling to God's promise of hope.  His hope is bigger than I can imagine, and I am ready to move on to a new chapter in my life.  I'm getting more and more excited about what God is going to do in the next year, and I excited about the forward motion that I feel.  Even if there is tension.  Truly, truly, truly:

Hope changes everything.