I Choose Hope

I woke up on the day of the Brexit result on an air bed on the floor of a friend's apartment in Boston, MA. It felt like a punch in the gut. It was also my last day in the US and was returning to a country who had just voted based on fear and lies to reject the foreigner and to focus on it's own perceived needs. I was not proud to be showing my UK passport to the airport checkin desk. I was not proud as hate related crimes rose and spiked in the following days.

Those thoughts have been fresh in my mind as I have gone through today. There have been so many comparisons with the Brexit campaign and the US presidential campaign. I can image that that there are those who share similar feelings to me on Brexit day.

This morning I chose to go forward with hope. I continue to chose hope. Everything within me wants to fall into despair. But I refuse to be torn down. There were times of real sadness today, but I will not let that quench me. I believe in a God who convicts people where they are not living in line with him, a God who transforms lives and turns them around. I believe that we have a part to play in that, from people like the man in Mark 5 who encounters Jesus and shares his testimony around the surrounding cities through to Jonah sent to Nineveh resulting in the King and the city being returned to God.

I choose hope because God is in control. It doesn't look like it right now. I don’t know where this is going. I don't know how it is going to work out. I don't know what plan or purpose he has in it. But I am certain that it looked the same when when Jesus was handed over to be humiliated, and flogged, and tortured and ultimately crucified. There was despair there because they thought that hope was lost. But Jesus was entrusting himself in the midst of this to God. The one who is bigger that all of this.

This morning I was reading 1 Kings 3. Solomon asks God for wisdom. That is what I prayed for the leaders and authorises in this world. I prayed, and will continue to pray for them have hearts that are wise and discerning, hearts that long after God. Meanwhile I will continue to pray and choose hope, to act in faith and the stand for and to show love.