Anchor Your Hope in God

First, welcome to my new Mass reflection series! In this series, I will share something I heard during the previous Sunday’s Mass and how I’m applying it in my life. I would love to start discussions about each of these topics, so after you’ve read through the post, please leave a comment! Today we are talking about hope.

God’s School of Hope

This week our priest discussed God’s “school of hope.” In short, he was referring to using suffering to wean us from human hope. Learning to place our hope fully and solely in God.

He used the analogy of an anchor: When we are in a storm of suffering, there is an anchor of hope reaching into the depths of our souls, below the waves, uniting us with Jesus.

As a former chief engineer on tugboats, I’m all in on any nautical analogies. And I especially love this idea of being fully anchored to Jesus.

Anchored to Jesus

In fact, our family has gone through A LOT over the past year and a half. Everyone has, I know. We moved halfway across the world on three-week’s notice with nowhere to go when we landed. And we’ve been through four jobs since then. But two things have remained constant no matter what we’ve been through: our faith and our family.

How We Keep Our Hope Alive

Despite all the challenges we’ve faced, we’ve kept our hope in God. Since Sunday’s Mass, I’ve been thinking about exactly how we’ve done this. Here are our family’s tricks to stay anchored to Jesus.

• Pray together as a family.
• Make time for God FIRST.
• Share with each other what we are grateful for every single day.
• Know that God always answers prayers; sometimes the answer is just no, or not right now.
• Play with the kids; their joy is the purest sign of God’s love.

As our priest said Sunday, suffering can lead us to despair. And human hopes will always disappoint. But by anchoring our hope in God, we come to learn just how much God truly loves us.

How do you keep your hope anchored to God? Please share in the comments!