The Heartbeat of Hope
Written by Dina Paoloni, Akron Drop-In Volunteer Coordinator
Have you ever hoped for a certain circumstance in your life to change? Me too. Especially around the holidays, it’s easy to hope for all that’s broken in our lives to be healed – relationships, diagnoses, drained bank accounts, depression, anxiety – just to name a few. At the Akron Drop-In Home, our team sees these struggles daily in the lives of the women we serve. It doesn’t take long to realize that superficial hope doesn’t do much, if anything, to bring life to what feels hopeless. It’s easy to lose all hope when we focus only on what we see; but real hope comes when we focus our attention on the unseen realities of Heaven.
Waiting is not just a common theme in the modern world, but it’s threaded throughout scripture. In Hebrew, the word “hope” is translated throughout the Bible as “waiting or tense expectations.” We all have felt the tension and anticipation of waiting, and it’s not easy, sometimes making us feel utterly hopeless. But there is another translation in scripture for hope that can change the way we view discouraging circumstances: it is Elpis, which means “living hope.”
Let’s pause here: what does it look like to have and walk in a hope that is alive despite the ways our lives feel or look dead because of the fallen world we live in? Like a flower that’s gone too long without water or sunlight, so are our lives when we go too long without leaning into the living hope that is ours in Jesus. This means we need to be intertwined with Him; abiding in His word and applying His truth to our lives. A living hope is a certain hope because the tomb is empty and our Savior is alive!
Isaiah points his Old Testament readers to this hope: “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint” (40:31, NIV). The object of our hope changes everything and fast forwards hundreds of years to New Testament hope found in Luke from the mouth of the prophet Simeon after he saw Jesus for the first time: “I have seen Your salvation which you have prepared for all people. He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and He is the glory of Your people Israel” (2:30-32, NLT).
Sharing a living hope with the women who walk into the doors of the Drop-In Homes is the heartbeat of RAHAB Ministries. This Christmas season, while many of us enjoy a warm home, family gatherings, fun traditions, and delicious food, the darkness of this world remains a lonely place for those living in it. For these women, this season consists of cold nights, empty stomachs, sad hearts, and unimaginable pain. That’s why sharing the Light who came as a baby is not just a motto we live for in December, but a mission we live every day. We have a living hope because of a Savior who is alive, and He is the heartbeat of the light that we seek to shine in the darkness.