hoping on for dear life.

I've been trying to talk myself out of this seminary idea. The problem is this: there's nothing else I want to do. There's nothing else I feel I should be doing.

Nevertheless, the whole idea is a little crazy, and off-the-beaten-path, and I've got no shortage of effective counter-points for why I should ignore the prompt. Some are valid.

I was with a friend tonight, and I knew that I needed to ask her to pray with me. But I couldn't. I just couldn't. Praying with people I know is so, so so hard. Vulnerable. Awkward. I just can't. My palms got sweaty even as I started to ask her, and my heart felt it might explode, and I just can't.

Driving home, I realized--this seminary thing, it's never going to work. Who do I think I am? I can't even pray with a friend, and I'm thinking about seminary? Yeah, no. Give up, Ash. Give it up. I don't care if you think God is leading you there--clearly you're wrong. Law school is nice. Go to law school.

Even now, the allure of that thinking is strong. I know that the reality is that I'm not fit for seminary. That I'm something of a failure in faith. But. And this is a big but. I want to choose hope. I want to hope that if God is calling me to seminary, as I feel He is, that however inadequate I am for the task, He will do something crazy, something unheard of, something remarkable, and astounding, and miraculous in my life to prepare me. This shouldn't be a difficult hope. He's already done everything. I live in Christ. I am redeemed. The impossible is the reality of my heart. I, and you, and every believer I know, we are all walking sign posts to the indestructible force of hope in Christ.

Yet, I get discouraged.

But hope is a non-negotiable. I don't get to choose when to have hope, and when to abandon it. There's no biblical support for my being selectively hopeful.

I think to my favorite scriptures, and Paul doesn't write that "His gifts, and His call are irrevocable, for some people." Joshua doesn't hear that "I might not leave you, nor forsake you." Jesus himself leaves no ambiguity, He never says that if you "ask me for anything in my name, I will do some of it."

Hope is not up for debate. It is irrevocable, it's all-encompassing, and it brooks no competition from fear. Hope is entire. Complete. Hope in God leaves no place for doubt. Hope is an imperative.

In that sense hope is not something that we do, it's who we are. As people of the light, hope is not a pleasantry. It's not a safety blanket. And maybe this is what separates out those who use religion, and those who are religious. We are often accused of adhering to religious beliefs in order to gain a sense of security. The world is rough, and so we go God, or so the line goes. But what of those moments when hope is not easy? When relationship with Christ doesn't feel very secure? When hope is a chore?

I can't lie. I don't feel very hopeful right now. I drove home tonight, thinking that I should just give up this idea of seminary because if I can't pray with friends--if I'm too scared to share my faith in that kind of intimacy--what hope do I have of having anything to do with ministry? So, ministry's out, I thought.

I felt no hope. No hope that I can be whoever I need to be to have God using me in the way I think He intends. I still don't feel hope for that. But I don't think it matters that I don't feel it. I'm not called to feel it. I am called to harbor it. To let God's hope live in me. To protect ferociously the hope of His promises.

I wonder if we're all called to such hope, not because it makes our lives better or safer or more secure, but because the lives of others depend upon it.