I see Hope

I have the sweetest Sunday school class. 

I hadn't been in Sunday school since I was a little girl.  Three hour church services and little ones kept me from being a part of Sunday school in Haiti, and our beloved church before Wellspring didn't do Sunday school, just small groups.  

So our random, transparent, unconcerned with raw, with tears, with sharing thoughts and testimonies and deep-digging Sunday school class has been a totally unexpected blessing in my life.  We start late. We finish late. We gently correct each other and unknowingly encourage each other and often redirect each other, and I cherish it. 

Today, Holy Spirit came. 

I don't know if anyone else was pierced. But we shared and studied Romans 5:1-5, and when it talks suffering, it is uncomfortable, because there is suffering in that circle. Loss. Infertility. Tumors. Surgeries. Deaths. Brinks of divorce. 

Our little class is sitting on the harsh edge of genuine, painful, ongoing suffering, and the Bible has the audacity to tell us the greatest gift is we have peace with God through Jesus. To tell us we rejoice in our sufferings...they produce endurance, character, hope...and that HOPE will never put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. 

Hope will never put us to shame. 

It will look embarrassing to the world. It might look foolish. Having hope. But Hope in Him will never let us down.  

We shared more hard, more thoughts, more applications, more pondering, and then Wanda, one of my favorite prayer warriors, shared a story of an old woman in her past who was perseverant in prayer. 

For decades Wanda heard her pray for her lost children. Pray they'd go to church. Pray they'd turn to Jesus. Three times a week, every week, Wanda would find this old woman at church praying and praying for her children. 

Yes, I thought. Perseverance in Prayer. 

And then one day, with nothing externally changing, Wanda got to church for hour of prayer, and something had radically changed. The woman who was always praying and crying and begging for her children had entirely changed her prayer. In her 90's, the woman sat with a huge smile of peace on her face. 

I....I...I...I see HOPE, she said. 

I see Hope. 

She died not long after, her prayer every day now filled with the same phrase muttered over and over. 

She saw something that had not yet materialized, and she clung to HOPE.  

Wanda says that one child and grandchild at a time has come to the church, has come to Jesus. The woman's entire family is following Jesus....NONE that she saw. 

He showed her something unseen, and she believed it hook, line and sinker. 

I was pierced by Wanda's words. Instantly, I saw hope in several situations I've always seen and prayed lost. Permanent. Done. 

What situations do I need to stop seeing the reality of and start seeing His?  

He brought two very quickly to my mind. Maybe He's been asking me to cling to HOPE instead of reality for a very long time. 

We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Suffering produces not just endurance, but hope...and His hope will never let us down.