Life as a living bean.

Hope is essential to human life. Without it we try to stay busy enough so that we are distracted by the bleak realities ahead. God's master story, of course, is the story of hope. '[A plan has been set forth in Jesus Christ], a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him you, when you believed him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.' (assembled pieces of Eph. 1:9-14) The part about "all things... in heaven and things on earth"? God's plans are to restore us--and creation itself. All things amiss now are to be gathered in under the activity of King Jesus. Everything will be made right. Something is afoot. Not only do we personally know the forgiveness of sins; we are also brought into God's plan to restore justice, beauty, reconciliation, and mercy. When we come to Jesus, life is suddenly jammed with purpose. ...This hope strengthens us in the hardships and drudgeries of everyday life. Knowing where all things in heaven and earth are headed, we can wait and persevere (1 Thess. 1:2), and that endurance or perseverance is key to a life well lived. Without it we are left with grumbling, addition, or despair, With it, we look ahead and tell a different story than the present distress tries to tell. Whereas chronic suffering assumes that nothing will ever change, hope knows that our rescuer is committed to our good. Hope knows the love of Jesus and grows in confidence that all the promises God makes have already been yes in Jesus.

You fill my soul with healing

...Another characteristic of life in the flesh is that, in both obvious and subtle ways, the self hides from and defends itself against God. My flesh wants to glory in the flesh. But this is one thing that God will never permit. So what does the flesh do? Tragically it protects itself because it fears that because God destroys the glory of the flesh, he will also destroy us. It cannot grasp that this same divine glory is committed to doing us good. It cannot see that self-protection against God's glory leads only to our ultimate loss.

"We sometimes fear that the New Testament's teaching on being devoted to God, and on growing in Holiness, will place unbearable demands on us. Remember therefore that it is the apostle Peter we are listening to here. Few disciples of the Lord Jesus have made more of a public mess of their early Christian life than he did. But the very fact that it is this disciple writing about Holiness ought to reassure us that Christ does not command on what he will not provide. There is no need to be permanently disabled by past failure or paralyzed by the fear that we are doomed to repeat it." 

We crush other women with our need to be liked and accepted, because what they do give is never enough. Because it wasn't meant to be enough.