By: Pastor Jarren Rogers

“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

Sometimes, on these dark, winter days, it’s easy to lose hope. The sun isn’t as bright as it used to be. The cold bites down to the bone. You’re confined inside because the outside world is frigid and bleak.

Then you open the newspaper, turn on the T.V., or scroll through Twitter and your hope shrivels even more. News of shootings, murders, and hate fly through your mind. You’re battered with division, injustice, and inhumanity. Then you turn off your T.V., close your newspaper, close the app, and all goes back to normal…except your hope is frail and torn.

You get ready for work and then head outside to face your day. Your hope is put to the test. Someone honks at you for going too slow and angrily speeds around you. Your boss is impatient and unempathetic. Your coworkers could care less about you or the job you’re doing. After work, you go to the grocery store and the brokenness of humanity is on display. Broken families, broken relationships, broken people, all around you. As you leave there’s a homeless man on the corner, shivering in the cold. Your hope is crushed down, cut short, and burnt up.

What hope can there be for the human race? What can be done? All we do is yell at each other, kill each other, and hate each other. What a mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

Then comes an unexpected phone call, an unwanted text, a diagnosis, an accident, a tragedy. Your hope floats away like dust in the winter wind.

“Is any suffering like my suffering that was inflicted on me, that the Lord brought on me in the day of his fierce anger?” (Lamentations 1:12).

You cry out to God. You get angry at God. You lament. You cover your eyes as tears begin to fill them and your heart grows heavy. The world is broken. Humanity is broken. I am broken. Why, oh God, has this happened?

“This is why I weep and my eyes overflow with tears. No one is near to comfort me, no one to restore my spirit” (Lamentations 1:16).

You open your eyes and there, on your bed stand, lies your Bible. You open it and begin to read. Encouragement, truth, and love fly through your mind.

“The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous run into it and are safe” (Proverbs 18:10).

“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10).

“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed” (Deuteronomy 31:8).

And you’re filled with hope.

The world may feel like a hopeless place, but you just have to know where to look.

Parents: Read some of the verses above to your children. Explain to them that they can find hope in God.