To what have you given your first hope?

• Relationships?
• A career?  Promotions?  Higher Salary?
• Achievements?  Fame? Books written about you?
• Vacations?  Trips of a lifetime?
• Bucket Lists…things to do before you die?  Retirement?

Our first hope should always be placed in the return of our Lord. When it is, instead, given over to other things — to artificial substitutions — this life is destined to become a series of disappointments and heartbreak.

“You’ll find it pretty hard to love when you’ve lost hope…Hope is so essential to your being that Scripture calls it ‘an anchor for the soul.'” ~John Eldredge, “All Things New”

“God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.  We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure…” (Hebrews 6:18-19a)