My Hope is Not in a Dishwasher!

Last Christmas James and I were giddy and full of hope. Not only was it Christmas time, but James was about to begin his final semester at Cornerstone. We were thrilled! As we traveled to the family Christmas gathering in Indiana, we talked about everything that we would finally be able to do. We were excited about getting a house. We were excited about having great health insurance and to be able to save for retirement. We were excited to finally have a steady income. James was so excited to be able to begin teaching and I of course was excited to finally be able to get a dishwasher!

Oh yes, a dishwasher! Those of you know me and my cooking insanity know how badly that I have wanted and needed a dishwasher in my home!

With high hopes, James began his student teaching and the nightmare came. Everything that we had hoped for and worked so hard for was ripped away from us. In the end, there was no teaching job, there was no steady income, there was no great health insurance plan or nice retirement plan, and there was no dishwasher. We had spent everything we had to make it through school, to this point where he would graduate and get a job. We were left broke, and brokenhearted, with everything that we had hoped for stripped away.

One day as we were sitting sround trying to figure out how this all happened to us and why this happened to people like us, I started laughing. I had put all of my hope in a dishwasher, yes a dishwasher...

Psalm 34:17- "A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all it's great strength, it cannot save."

The Carrie remix... "A dishwasher is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all it's great cleaning ablitity, it cannot save."

It's kind of like a verse that I like.
Psalm 106:20 "And they exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass." God had just rescued his people from slavery, he did an amazing miracle getting them across the Red Sea, and provided for them. These same miracles moved a young prostitute names Rehab to trust God and his own people worship a cow... I can just see God up there groaning saying c'mon people, it's a cow... it eats grass! I part the sea, and it eats grass...

And then here am I with my dishwasher... it cleans dishes...

How ridiculous do I sound now?...

I think something that we have learned through this is that our hope has to be in God and nothing else. We have both walked with God faithfully, but I never realized how much hope and joy we had put into some of those things, and how defeated we were when those things were taken out of our reach. As nice as those things are in this life, they carry no weight in heaven, in our relationship with God, and in our joy.

Psalm 13:12- "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life"

I started to take notes in my Bible when I heard sermons, so that I would always have them to refer to about certain passages, these notes I have next to this verse must have been from a sermon that I heard. "Why are Americans miserable?We are surrounded by stuff, hoping it works. It leaves our hearts sick. We finally think this will do it, this will fix it, but it turns out it didin't work."

And I just have to love this. When we put our hope in God, look what he does while the dishwasher is falling apart...

Psalm 146:Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord his God, the maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them the Lord, who remains FAITHFUL FOREVER. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, and the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, and the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord wathches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frusterates the ways of the wicked. The Lord reighns forever, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the Lord.

There isn't a house, retirement fund, job, health insurance, or even a dishwasher that can do all that!

During this dark time in our lives, we have had to set our eyes on God. We could choose to be miserable with our situation, or we could choose joy. Even though it was hard, and we have had our down days, we have been able to laugh through it. (One of my favorite laughing moments is when I was feeling really down about everything, and James told me it was going to be okay because he was going to apply for the gas station manager job down the road and this year he would win the award for the best gas station manager in the state of MI!) We have learned that the things that we thought were important really aren't the most important things in life. We are so thankful that our family is full of love, and that God is with us. We still don't know how things are going to turn out, but we have hope in our God who is forever faithful!