Coping and Hoping in God

“You, GOD, are High God of the cosmos,

Far, far higher than any of the gods.”

~Psalm 97:9 (Msg)

God is bigger — yes, we can cope,

God is deeper — yes, we can hope.

God is wider — than any problem’s threat,

God is longer — than any sinner’s debt.

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No matter our present experience, whether we rally in the abyss of hopelessness or are sunken to doldrums or take pleasure in plain delight, in and amongst all these, our belief in God holds us firm.

Because we believe in a Big God—the Divine nature unlimited in power, scope, and reach—we can glory in the magnificence of belief.

To glory in the bigness of God is simply, by belief, deciding to hope and, therefore, presenting faithfully before God and the world. Coming to this point of expressed belief is not always easy, but landing at the decision is. It takes courage.

Having decided for belief—to glory in the bigness of God—to believe that God is bigger than any concern or worry or loss or guilt—we become benefactors of blessing.

Faith And The Ability To Cope And Hope

Only faith in a Big God is enough to cope and hope in seemingly impossible situations. And whether these situations come for an hour or two or last days or even longer is irrelevant. Somehow, especially as we look back, God’s bigness is big enough to get us through.

Grace is sufficient; not copious nor more than we need, just sufficient.

Even at times when coping seems impossible, we can know that God is big enough to help us endure the impossible. Even as we sink on a tumultuous day, having felt vanquished, we still somehow rise for the next. Repeated instances and memories of times like these, where we endured, reinforce our faith.

Faith And The Ability To Cope And Hope

If we are able to cope we are able to hope.

Grace has got us through, and despite our despairing we have coped. And if we didn’t cope we learned more about coping. The next time we were pushed for hope we seemed to cope somehow better.

The strangeness in coping is that we find that life requires us to grow; what we struggled to cope with a few years ago we perhaps cope better with now. Or maybe we are reminded that coping is linked with hoping.

We can know that faith is the passage to coping, and that, in turn, is the passage to hoping.

Faith helps us cope; when we cope, we have hope.

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.