Moving Toward Hope

You can’t live a day without hope. Hope is why people get married and have children. Hope is why parents send their children off to school every day. Hope is why people buy ab machines and gym memberships. But what if hope isn’t just about our circumstances? What if hope is meant to spring from who we are in Christ? In the book of Ruth, we observe her go through a transformation in her identity. She begins as a foreigner, an outsider, and ends up as not just a servant, but a wife! As believers, our spiritual journey mimics that of Ruth. In fact, Ephesians 2:11 says it this way: “Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 2:12–13, NIV) Your identity in Christ is your biggest reason for hope.