I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a schedule for cutting the lawn. It’s not like every Saturday morning I go out and crank up the lawnmower. Sometimes the weeds get too high in just a couple of days to ignore them any longer. So, I get out there and take care of business when I think it needs to be taken care of.
And just in case you think this is at the top of my priority list - it isn't. I'll look at the lawn and think, "It doesn't look all that bad. I can wait a few more days. No one will notice." And then after those few days pass by, I'll say, "See, it's still not all that bad. I was so smart not to waste my time."
But eventually, it gets too tall, too bad that I just can't ignore it any longer.
Here in Florida, we don’t get a break either. Our grass grows all year long. Yes, in the winter it grows slower. But those pesky weeds grow a whole lot faster than the grass, so they stick up all over the place.
Hope is like cutting your lawn. You can ignore it for a while, but then you know that something’s wrong. What once looked nice and neat is now an uncontrolled jungle. You know it’s time to do something about it. The grass isn’t going to cut itself. You need to take care of business and fix your hope problem.
And that’s the first step. We have to admit that we have a hope problem. Only then can we move to the second step – actually doing something about it. And this starts with realizing that there’s no time like the present to start doing something about hope in your life.
Someone a whole lot smarter than me once told a bunch of people just us something important. They said that we need to sit up and pay attention. That today is the day to start down a different path in life. It’s time to turn from trying to live on our own and start trusting God with our life(1).
You see, hope is just like cutting your lawn. It has a starting point when we’re ready to do something about it. Isn’t it time to start changing to bring hope into your life?
(1) God says, “I heard you at the right time, and I gave you help on the day of salvation.” I tell you that the “right time” is now. The “day of salvation” is now. 2 Corinthians 6:2 ERV
NOTE: Yes, this is the start of a new series on hope. Yes, hope is like cutting your lawn. Over the next days we'll be exploring how we need hope like we need to cut our lawn. And yes, we'll talk about having someone else cut your lawn too.