A living hope

"And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love," 1 Corinthians 13:13.
Love, a word so vast, beautiful and yet so simple. Love. Hope. Faith. Love.
About a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to aide in Hurricane Katrina relief in Mississippi with a group of college peers. It was a fun trip, as fun as you can get with a bunch of crazy college-aged Christians traveling in vans for 12 or so hours.
The laughter ceased as our vans rolled into Pascagoula, Mississippi. What was once a bustling, coastal city was stripped. Stripped of people, of shutters, of signs, of light and of life.
As we drove in the dark to our destination, a large church which had very little damage (divine intervention, perhaps?), I could start to feel it. A lost hope from shattered lives seeking someone to shed just a little light on them, a glimmer of hope, perhaps some love, even.
Our vans got to the sight and we began to unload our belongings and cart them to our appropriate rooms. The ladies of our group shared a large teen rec room. The brown, green, blue and beige air-mattress' decorated the bland burber as we unrolled our sleeping bags. I remember the room was full of nervous laughter as we got ready for bed.
After breakfast the following morning, we loaded up and went on a tour of some of the worse affected areas in Pascagoula. Homes leveled, cars in random places, strange debris hanging from the bare trees, huge plywood signs displaying Insurance policy numbers and threatening 'no-trespassing' notes crammed by debris. People were outside, rummaging through their things, attempting a clean up process with tears carpeting their faces.
Our team split into two separate teams and worked on drywalling a church and a house. The church, ironically, was being sponsored by a church in Crawfordsville (something I had written a story about -- the Lord works is such awesome ways).
God used a bunch of non-experienced dry-wallers and did immeasurably more than we thought. By the end of the week, we had given a church, it's family and a single women a fresh start. Some could call it a hope. But what we did was not of us, but of Him, the one who CAN do more than we can ever imagine.
I love all the analogies in this story. Our lives can be shaken, blown around and stripped to the point that we are crawling around in dust and ashes, crying out for a hope. That hope is smack dab in front, calling for a step of faith and arms wide open, ready and yearning to give a hug that will last a lifetime.
In the Lord there is HOPE, mercy, forgiveness. The scriptures even say that we can be pressed but not crushed, persecuted yet not abandoned,and struck down, but not destroyed through Christ Jesus.
Rough winds will come, rain will come, thunder and lightening will come, but there will always be that one constant LOVE watching over us.
On our last day, we traveled to a bridge that was supposed to take us over to Biloxi. It was destroyed. We got out and walked around the coast area and just stood in awe of how a storm so strong could rip 3 feet of concrete from a steel skeleton of a bridge. In the sand close to the bridge, littered with random debris and tire tracks Amber and I drew a message that will outlast any storm and flood and any pain. Hope. Hope in Jesus Christ.
Through Him and Him only will we understand what Hope truly means.
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." 1 Peter 1:3-5