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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Lamentations 3:24
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in Him
As I started this verse, I laughed. “Portion” did not mesh with my recurring perception of God’s offering: breadcrumbs. As I have navigated challenges and frustrations that might have crippled my younger faith, I have been sustained not by huge displays of God, but little crumbs of His presence. I say “sustain”, but in reality I have been unsatisfied by his actions that could just as easily be coincidence; I want more, not minuscule bits on the dirty floor.
God has not been enough for me. What if that is less an issue with God, and more an issue of my perception?
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul. Not my heart, nor mind, nor strength, but my soul. The understanding that God is actually enough here is not emotionally, intellectually, or experientially discerned; something spiritual claims a truth that otherwise may seem a lie. My emotions, logic, and fatigued-body all perceive that God is not my portion; my soul says, “He is; therefore I will hope in Him.”
How can I get better at hearing and trusting my soul? How can I latch onto spiritual realities when the here-and-now realities are far more convincing and pressing?
Jesus reminds us in Mark 12:30 to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” When the soul says, “I will hope in Him,” it is not a commitment made in isolation; the “I” involves the heart, soul, mind and strength. The determination to hope is a collaborative effort of our emotions, spirit, intellect, and body… even if only one believes it.
