Does My Life Reflect Hope?

A Reflection on the Psalm for Sunday, October 20th, 2024:
Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Psalm 33

R. Let your love be upon us, Lord, even as we hope in you.

The word of the Lord is upright,
and all his work is done in faithfulness.
He loves righteousness and justice;
the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord. 

R. Let your love be upon us, Lord, even as we hope in you.

Truly the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him,
on those who hope in his steadfast love,
to deliver their mouth from death,
and to keep them alive in famine.

R. Let your love be upon us, Lord, even as we hope in you.

Our soul waits for the Lord, 
he is our help and shield.
Let your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us,
even as we hope in you.

R. Let your love be upon us, Lord, even as we hope in you.
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Pause. Pray. Reflect.

What stands out to me is the word "hope." 

It’s early morning – pre-sun and pre-coffee – and I just started jotting down some of the reflections I have on this psalm. Before putting pen to paper, I sat for a few moments in silence and asked myself,

“Does my life really reflect the hope I say I have in Him?” 

Whew. Things got real. Really fast. I felt so called out. Immediately. That’s a lot to think about pre-coffee….

I spent this past week reading this psalm and letting it sit in me as I went about my daily routines. I think I was expecting to be hit with some perfectly eloquent insight to capture the entirety of this beautiful psalm.  But all that came repeatedly to my mind was, 

“Wait, do I dare hope?”

Hope is a pretty easy word to toss around and use in almost any context with almost any level of fervor. 

I say all the time that, “I hope my toddler sleeps well tonight,”  but I don’t hold my breath or have any expectations that he’ll do his best to honour that hope… 

But placing my hope in God – that’s a whole other thing. 

Do I dare hope that God’s steadfast – unflinching and never-ending – love is indeed upon me? Do I dare hope in His promises? Do I dare hope that my entire life and each individual day of it is held in the palm of His hand? 

Because if I do, that changes everything. 

I say I place my hope in Christ – but I’ve got buckets full of worries and stresses about life and work and relationships that tell me I’ve got a ways to go in actually following through with it.

Do I dare surrender those worries to the hope I have in Him?

If I truly hope in Him, I walk differently. I brush my teeth differently. Truly hoping that I’m held by infinite love means a heck of a lot fewer knots in my stomach when things are out of my hands. Hope means the nitty gritty tasks of my day are filled with light and my whole day is oriented towards His love. 

I’m no psalmist, but if I were to rewrite Psalm 33, I’d say something like, “Let your love be upon us even as we *continually try and try again and fail and try again to* hope in you…”

But what I love about the real psalmists (the ones God actually chose for the job) is how much they’re just constantly throwing it all on the line. They repeatedly reveal authentic faith and hope in Him and in all of His promises. 

May we fling ourselves, like the psalmists, into bold hope. May the little tasks and realities of our daily lives start to be illuminated with hope and belief in His love being upon us. May our gaze and our whole lives begin to, moment by moment, truly reflect the hope we’ve boldly placed in Him.

And may I learn to at least have my coffee before my next existential self examination…




Catherine Burnham

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