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the god of hope
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# the god of hope Canonical: https://fragments.ikon.io/pieces/the-god-of-hope Type: fragment Published: 2026-08-25T19:28:18.759Z Published version created: 2026-08-25T23:43:48.398Z ## Summary this morning, part of my reading was from romans 15, which contains much to reflect on. 15.13 caught my attention: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the p ## Writing this morning, part of my reading was from romans 15, which contains much to reflect on. 15.13 caught my attention: > May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (NRSVue) hope is such a marvelous place to be. when hope fills my heart & mind, there's such a lightness to my spirit. but hope in this shattered world is often (usually?) so fragile. and when hope (inevitably?) dies away, there's a heaviness, a cloud of gloom that weighs me down. "i had hoped..." is one of the saddest possible starts to a sentence. remember those two in luke 24 trudging their despondent way to emmaus, telling an unrecognized jesus all about what had happened to him? "we had hoped..." what then does it mean for god to be "a god of hope"? i read it simply as that god can always be relied on, can always be hoped in. relied on for what? hoped in for what? i suppose simply that god is good. that god is always, always, always acting & moving from a posture of love toward me, toward you, toward all creation, simultaneously. when i find myself believing these things in spite of what i see around me, the god of hope then fills me with all joy & peace... and this joy & peace create even more hope within me, an overflowing abundance of hope within me. and all of that — the believing & the joy & the peace & the abounding hope are all themselves the power of the holy spirit within me, filling me with life eternal. but what if my actual circumstances are simply awful? what if everything points sensibly to a place of exhaustion, of despair, of gloom, of hopelessness? if god is actually a god of hope, of love, of steadfast faithfulness, then there must be a path out of that awful place that leads to honesty, to complaint, to grief, to lament, to hope, to joy, to peace, to freedom, to self-giving love, to life. it may not necessarily or always be a path out of those circumstances. perhaps the path that leads to life doesn't lead us out of that awful place but rather sets us free to be filled with hope & joy & peace right where we are. that is surely the witness of so many who have walked the way of jesus before us. but what if we altogether miss that path that leads to life? what if we choose something else? well, in the wisdom & mercy & love of god, when we make the wrong choice, we find ourselves in a fresh set of circumstances within which there is yet another new (old?) path toward freedom, joy, peace. always, always, always. at least, that's how i read romans 15.13. ## Featured passage > May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. ## Images 