Off-Season: Resting in Hope

"My body will also rest in hope." Psalm 16:9

This verse was my goal for the off-season when I hung up my spikes four weeks ago. “Sit” was the instruction I received from my coach right after we decided to shut it down for the season. I was to take weeks off from any physical activity, and even longer from running. I might have matured a bit in terms of following directions, or my body must have been really tired, but I obeyed those orders. As someone who gets antsy after one day of no exercise, the rest part was surprisingly easy. The hope part, however, was a different story. It was difficult to have hope in myself after setting a PWR in my final race of the year (you’ve heard of Personal Best Record? I’ll let you figure out that acronym then). I knew that hope was a big theme in the Bible, but I couldn’t feel it despite a thorough attempt through prayer and scripture. Ironically, I felt hopeless in my attempt to find hope. A few days after realizing my hopelessness, I started a devotional about God’s promises. I quickly realized that I wasn’t buying into them. I was too busy reading the fine print and questioning their theological application to my life that I wasn’t trusting them. “Romans 12:8, yeah, but what does good really mean? There are contingencies — it only applies to certain people…” These were the thoughts that I subconsciously trained myself to have, but I didn’t have a logical reason to disprove them. I made it through that devotional of God’s promises with this frame of mind. However, right after that plan I read Ephesians 2:12 — “Remember that at that time you [Gentiles] were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.” Before I read this verse, I considered myself an excluded foreigner to the covenants of God’s promises. I didn’t believe they were meant about me. But in that (wrong) belief, I was discounting the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross. His death and resurrection mean that all — including Gentiles in the Bible times and me today — can place hope in Christ. Of course I was feeling hopeless: I wasn’t fully experiencing the power of the resurrection, and I wasn’t placing my hope in God’s promises. And no wonder that I couldn’t find hope in my sport. It’s rational to feel that way after a season like that. But as someone included in the covenants of the promise, my hope should have never be in my season, times, or performances (thankfully!). My hope is in God’s faithfulness to His promises! (On a slightly off-topic note, I have to bring up the identity thing. It’s such a biiiiig topic in Christian athletics: your identity is not in your times but in your God. Couldn’t agree more. But that’s hard practically. What do you even mean by identity? How can you tell what your identity is in? By what you hope in, hope for.)

“The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

And it all comes full circle. Back to God being good. All things working for good (Romans 12:8). Back to waiting quietly. Resting in hope (Psalm 16:9).