When Hope is Deferred

The writer of Proverbs had a point when he wrote these words: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” (Proverbs 13:12a)
How many of you have had your hope deferred (put off or delayed)? It happens so often. God gives us a promise either directly or through the words of another and it becomes something that we long for, we anticipate and dream about. We know it is coming… and we wait.
Eugene Peterson in “The Message” calls it, “unrelenting disappointment.” The longer we wait, the harder it is to wait because our hearts become weary in the waiting. The promise is out there, somewhere, beyond our reach …and waiting for it is hard. It really can make our hearts sick.
Hope deferred is not unique to us. We can read accounts of it stretching back to the book of Genesis. Abraham and Sarah were promised a son but it was years before that promised was fulfilled. They were heartsick over it to the point that they tried to fulfill their own promise by Abraham having a son with another woman. Repercussions from that decision still affect us today.
Fast forward to the children of Israel in captivity in Egypt, and a man named, Moses. God freed them from their oppressors and gave them a promise of land that would be their own and of the nation they would become. That promise was delayed for 40 years. The trip from Egypt to Canaan should have taken them a few weeks, but their hope was deferred for 40 years.
Fast forward to today. We all know people who have held onto the promise of bearing children year after year only to remain barren. We all know people who have been holding onto the promise of a better job, or of a specific calling on their lives to be realized. We all know people who have become disheartened in the waiting. Perhaps we are them.
I don’t begin to understand why hope is sometimes, if not often, deferred. Maybe the fulfillment of our promise is dependent on other things lining up that are known only to God. We don’t see what He sees. We don’t know what He knows.
Some of His promises are so big and profound that if we were to realize them today, they would hurt us. It is in the waiting where He makes us ready. If He is holding back a promise fulfilled, He has a reason to do so, but do we trust Him?
The only thing I know for sure is that He is God and I am not, and if my hope is being deferred, then my best choice is to press into Him, learn to trust His timing and embrace the process.
Thankfully, that verse doesn’t end with our hope being deferred. It goes on to say that, “A sudden good break can turn life around.” (12b) We can’t see an overview of time, but our waiting which seems endless may be closer to an end than we know. That promise might be just around the corner. Hang on. It will be worth it.

- Kathy Little