Hope is a Rubber Band

Let all that I am wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him. – Psalm 62:5

Rubber bands are brilliant creations; so simple, but so useful for so many different tasks. My daughter uses them to hold her hair in a pony-tail. My son uses them as bullets in his imaginary gun. My mom uses them for keeping her recipes together, and my dad uses them to keep that broken toolbox shut. I was considering the rubber band today, and how it relates to hope.

hoperubberbandHope is an elastic thing. Sometimes our hope seems to stretch to impossible distances, while still holding together. Sometimes our hope is small and seems useless. When wrestling with invisible illness, hope is so vital. We literally cannot make it through our challenges without hope. Imagine our hope is a rubber band.

If we just rush into an unrealistic hope, like a healing that will not be granted, and that’s all we hope for regardless of logic or an obvious “no” answer, it can be a lot like stretching a rubber band too far… something’s going to snap. There will be a painful welt raised on our soul and we are left with a non-functioning hope if we refuse to stretch our hope toward something attainable.

If we never hope for anything, and sit to wallow in our illness and the painful parts of it, never asking God what we still have to offer and hoping that He will guide us in those things, our experience can be a lot like a rubber band that has dry rot. Have you ever tried to use an old rubber band, one that’s been sitting in the bottom of your desk drawer for about 2 years, and has never been used? It will snap before you can even shape it on your fingers to attempt to place it around something. Perhaps it will even show fraying or breakage in more than one place, so that you can see the weak spots in it before it’s even used.

The right amount of hope, sustained for a prolonged period of time will yield a stretch that will not bounce back in hard times. We’ve all seen rubber bands that have been stretched around an item for a long time without breaking. Even when they are removed from the object, the elasticity in the band is diminished, so that the rubber remains the size that would be necessary to hold the same item again without having to stretch for it.

This is what we should be!! A rubber band that is not meant to hold something in, but to allow Christ to flow through us. A hope that always shows the size of our Father’s love, is ready to contain our frustrations, but never bounces back to “self size”. It doesn’t happen overnight, any more than the rubber band loses it’s elasticity overnight. But it is possible to attain, and is a glorious aim.

 

Heavenly Father, stretch us just enough today that our hope loses it’s self shape and elasticity, just enough, not to break us but to grow us in you. In Jesus’ Name, Amen…

 


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May God Bless You,

Shelly

6 Comments on “Hope is a Rubber Band

    • Salina, it’s wonderful to meet you, too! I enjoyed your post on light and darkness, so much truth there, and a great analogy! So glad you enjoyed your visit to my page, I hope you’ll stop by often! <3 Heart Hugs, Shelly

  1. What a wonderfully full and balanced look at hope—as a rubber band! And I just posted about hope today, too! Our hope does have to stretch, and arggh, stay stretched sometimes longer than we wish. But that’s hope that has grown, as you so aptly picture it. What I have to keep coming back to is hope not in any preconceived outcomes, but Hope in the God of Hope Himself. Thanks for this!
    Sylvia R recently posted…How Darkness Defines the Light—and What About When There is No Light?My Profile

    • Sylvia, thanks for your insightful comment! You are so right…. the hope MUST be in God Himself! That is why so many people feel hopeless, I think…. because they are hoping in the outcome, and our view is much too finite to see HIS outcome (the bigger picture). Blessings to you today! <3 Heart Hugs, Shelly

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