Stories of Hope: Having Only Perfect Eyesight

How is your eyesight? Do you have 20/20 vision? This month, I am hosting a series on “Stories of Hope” that will feature friends, some of whom are sisters, mothers, and grandmothers, and their experience with Hope. Our first post is from Carol Schellenberg. She shares about her experience with HOPE and seeing from God’s perspective. I pray you are blessed and encouraged. Please welcome Carol.

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A song I’ve loved for decades goes like this: “I will change your name. You shall no longer be called wounded, outcast, lonely or afraid. I will change your name. Your new name shall be confidence, joyfulness, overcoming one; faithfulness, a friend of God, one who seeks My face.” (by Eden’s Bridge). I love this song because it is filled with hope.

God owns hope; in fact, He overflows with hope. He’s got hope to spare. It’s shareware. He transfers His hope to the souls of mankind… to my soul and yours. As we look to Him in anticipation, our trust anchors to Him. Trusting God in the uncertainties of life is comparable to a ship anchoring to a rock through stormy seas. We rely on the solid rock who is Christ. He is our hope in fretful seas of emotional distress, lightning bolts of sudden trauma, and endless cold rains of illness… even through the shivering dis-ease of imbalance. He is our hope to ride out the storm.

Hope is an attribute of Almighty God. Trusting in Him imbues us with all joy and peace, a refreshing realization! Scripture causes us to understand that God is in the filling business. He desires us to be continually full and being filled with good things, rather than being empty, heartsick, lonely or afraid. There is no lack for them who trust Him. When we are full, we pour out to others as well. An indicator of health is when we receive fullness from God and have some extra to pour out to others. In contrast, ill-health might be feeding off people and keeping to ourselves.

HOPE: Having Only Perfect Eyesight

To be in hope is seeing from God’s perspective. It is like having only perfect eyesight, believing what you see is real, true, here, and now. Some people are visionaries by their natural bent. So many times, the positive view of possibilities magnifies itself within a visionary’s thoughts, causing them to question how that newly pictured thing could be brought into reality, sooner rather than later.

The evidence of hopeful thoughts is that a person faithfully moves forward in that direction, inspiring themselves and motivating others to join in or develop exciting corollary ventures. Once activated, fertile ideas spawn more creativity. Since problems are solved and the drudgery of common routines becomes eased or easier, we are encouraged and pleased with the outcome of our changes.

Creative ideas and imaging become catalysts for successful business ventures, allowing people to have amazing careers in new directions. It’s exciting! This is how it happened for us. We wanted to do something else and asked the Lord what we could do as a couple later in life. It seemed that God opened the door to have a public ministry, a café, and meeting house.

We found a place for lease on the highway in a beautiful resort town among the mountains of British Columbia, Canada, and refurbished it within a year. Opening our doors as a café was encouraged by the smaller city, and we began to grow into our own, a hidden gem in a busy location. We are a rest spot on the highway, with great food and coffee, lots of musical instruments as well as games to play, and puzzles to complete.

Several of our customers have shared that our café is graced with God’s peaceful energy. Hope planted the seeds of faith and sustained us through the turbulence of starting something new and nurturing it for this year.

Friend, whatever you may be trusting God for, don’t give up. Hold on to Hope and choose to see through God’s perfect eyes.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing [through the experience of your faith] that by the power of the Holy Spirit you will abound in hope and overflow with confidence in His promises. Romans 15:13, AMPC

Further Encouragement: Romans 5:3-4, Romans 8:24-25, Romans 8:28, Romans 12:10-12.

Carol Schellenberg has many loves. In addition to running Life Café, she loves maintaining relationships, making new friends in their café community, reading, keeping healthy happening, playing a bit of jazzy piano, and quilting up a storm. She has added writing to her repertoire, and wonders whether speaking to a group might be possible someday. You can connect with Carol at Life Café.