Hope

Almost twenty years ago Dee Dee and I started dreaming about travels we would be doing as a couple during our marriage.  We would share with each other different places from all around the world and most of the places were different except for one place, Scotland.  Being a Galloway whose family came to the United States in the late 1700’s from Scotland, we have documented history of a Galloway dying in Scotland around 1100 in Edinburgh.  We also discovered early in our marriage that the Dee River ran through the region of Galloway in Scotland.  Dee Dee started making the statement that one day she would stand on the Dee River in Galloway and take a picture.  After many children and lots of financial losses through the years it seemed we would never see this event ever happen in our lifetime.  This did not stop Dee Dee from saying that one day she was going to take a picture on the Dee River in Galloway.  After becoming missionaries in Bulgaria I never imagined that Dee Dee’s dream would ever come true.  Then by a miracle, from a grant to attend a minister’s conference in Birmingham, England, Dee Dee got to experience her dream.  I now recall that she keep saying I’m going to have my picture taken on the Dee river in Galloway and I started picturing her standing beside the river taking a picture.  When I snapped the picture this week of her at the river, God did it better than I had imagined, Dee Dee was standing the Dee bridge on top of the Dee River in Galloway.  So what is this simple lesson, Hebrews 11:1 now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.  I want to focus on the word hope, without hope, faith could not be the substance.  Hope is the ability to imagine or visualize something in your mind, like the picture of Dee Dee standing by the Dee River.  After years of confessing and believing, with hope, this dream finally came true.  It did not just happen, it was first hoped for, then a picture was formed in her mind twenty years ago, and then God did more than we could have imagined.  “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  Ps. 37:4