I am over halfway through my 30 Day journey exploring 30 passages on hope.
Below is the backstory and a new reflection!
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A year ago I felt like God was not giving me joy, and He gently said, “I’m offering you joy; you’re rejecting it.”
God invited me to spend 30 days processing 30 verses on joy, and turn it into a devotional, Rejecting Joy No Longer. It was a valuable time of confronting my assumptions and willingness, and taking steps — even if tiny — to seek God over myself. Then an interesting thing happened: I began wrestling with hope. Over the course of a year a series of event occurred that threw into question what God was doing, what I was doing, and what any of it was working toward. It was easy to cry out to God to give me hope.
And just as He did before, He gently said, “I’m offering you hope; you’re rejecting it.”
It was clear what He was inviting me to do (though I put it off for weeks), and I am now a week in to reading a verse on hope each day for 30 days. One difference this year is that I am processing these verses live on social media, as a way of leaning into transparency and authenticity. I want people to know I am not coming at this as an expert with something to tell them, but a struggling human striving to have ears to hear.
I hope to share some of these reflections with you along the way. You can find each day’s reflection collected here, and Day 1’s devotional is shared below. If you are struggling with hope, I’m hopeful my journey can serve as encouragement.
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2 Corinthians 3:12
Since we have such a hope, we are very bold…
I often do not feel bold; more often I do not want to be bold. In hardship there can come a fatigue in rallying and standing strong for spiritual truths that seem practically absent. I am not very bold.
Then again, what is boldness but the willingness to act one way when everything screams to do the opposite? My humanity can be at the end of itself amidst struggles, yet somehow I keep standing. (Ephesians 6:13) Others see it when I cannot, because I know how weak and hopeless I feel, yet they see a display of hope.
It is not from me; it’s often in spite of me. Verse 17 says, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” It is not my understanding, capacity, or resolve that make me bold: it’s that freedom. Freedom means you are no longer bound to the fears that try to overpower you — fear of death, of loss of security, or reputation, or control — and instead stand secure in a new reality.
This is the core of “such a hope.” There was an old covenant — old ways of understanding and relating to God — that all found beyond their capacity. Jesus revealed a “new covenant”, a new way of understanding and relating to God, that was still beyond our capacity, though not beyond the Spirit within us. “… what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory.” (v.10)
In this, the Spirit can make us very bold.
