“Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.”

Those who put their hope in the Lord and trust in God are blessed, and those who trust only in people are disappointed. Sometimes the desire for immediate gratification gets the best of us, and we want things now instead of waiting for the right time. Those who trust in the Lord are rewarded by fruits in their right time, and not dismayed at the wait through drought. For those in the midst of winter now, we trust that spring will come. We can hope we have nice weather, and certainly wish that spring would come sooner, but it will come, certainly, and in its own time. Like the seasons that change, the Lord is always there. Instead of cursing the winter, or despairing that spring will come, we should accept the different seasons and know that spring will be here soon. Too many people, when they don’t see immediate and palpable evidence of God in their lives are too quick to turn away, to turn toward the material instead of trusting in the Lord and waiting for their answers in their due time.

Those who trust only in people, in the material world, may seem to have what they want and need, but that success can be as illusory as the death of winter. Even in the midst of winter, plants are planning and waiting and starting to grow so they’ll be ready for spring. But some people, like the rich man in the Gospel, are living materially satisfactory lives, without a thought to the spiritual ramifications. They are trusting in things rather than trusting in God and doing His works. But the rich man’s trust in the things of this world was misplaced. He realizes too late he should have trusted in the Lord and had some compassion and a thought for the next world. He can’t believe that the poor beggar Lazarus who had nothing in this world (except it seems that he trusted in God and did the Lord’s work) in the next world has all the riches of heaven. The rich man begs that Lazarus be brought back from the dead as a warning for the rich man’s rich brothers who are heading down the same wrong path. Perhaps this is the same Lazarus who later is raised from the dead, but our rich man is told that the brothers should listen to the word of God and heed those words and trust in God – that if they have no faith in God, what good will their faith in men, dead or alive do them?