Daily Lesson for March 22, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Romans chapter 5 verses 3 and 4:

3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

We usually think of hope as what we start with that gets us through whatever struggles and trials we go through. But in actuality hope is what we are left with after having gone through the struggle. We don't start out with hope; we end up with it.

Paul, who knew a thing or two about struggle and trial tells us where our hope comes from.  "Suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character" and then he said, finally, "character produces hope."  This is why the most hopeful people we know are people who have struggled and endured and whose character has been shaped by the pain of life's trials. They are the hopeful ones; they are the ones who give us hope.

Optimism is what we start out with in the morning, when the sun is rising, the dew fresh, and what the day will bring is yet unknown. Hope, on the the other hand, is what we're left with when the sun is setting and the day has been long and full of toil and the prospect for tomorrow being any easier is very, very dim. Conceived in struggle and born of survival, that's when hope arrives to keep us from despair -- right when we need it most.