Hope Anchors The Soul Quotes

The Voyager We are all lonely voyagers sailing on life's ebb tide, To a far off place were all stripling warriors have died, Sometime at eve when the tide is low, The voices call us back to the rippling water's flow, Even though our boat sailed with love in our hearts, Neither our dreams or plans would keep heaven far apart, We drift through the hush of God's twilight pale, With no response to our friendly hail, We raise our sails and search for majestic light, While finding company on this journey to the brighten our night, Then suddenly he pulls us through the reef's cutting sea, Back to the place that he asked us to be, Friendly barges that were anchored so sweetly near, In silent sorrow they drop their salted tears, Shall our soul be a feast of kelp and brine, The wasted tales of wishful time, Are we a fish on a line lured with bait, Is life the grind, a heartless fate, Suddenly, "HUSH", said the wind from afar, Have you not looked to the heavens and seen the new star, It danced on the abyss of the evening sky, The sparkle of heaven shining on high, Its whisper echoed on the ocean's spray, From the bow to the mast they heard him say, "Hope is above, not found in the deep, I am alive in your memories and dreams when you sleep, I will greet you at sunset and with the moon's evening smile, I will light your path home.. every last lonely mile, My friends, have no fear, my work was done well, In this life I broke the waves and rode the swell, I found faith in those that I called my crew, My love will be the compass that will see you through, So don't look for me on the ocean's floor to find, I've never left the weathered docks of your loving mind, For I am in the moon, the wind and the whale's evening song, I am the sailor of eternity whose voyage is not gone.

Where we sail and anchor our heart fill up the multitude odyssey paving to the coming home of our soul.

Because of Jesus, we have hope. And because of hope, even in the midst of the worst storms of this life, we have an anchor for our souls.

When I was on a book tour last year, I saw a sign in a bookstore in a seaside town in Maine that was carefully drawn with popular symbols of coastal living and these words were entwined: Hope anchors the soul. From that childhood that many might call "disadvantaged," I was anchored in the belief that most things are possible.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure." (Hebrews 6:19)

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

An atheist is a disappointed true believer; he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope

He begins to sing to her, very softly, almost not singing at all, just a whisper of a tune. He spins out the tune like it is a tale he is telling her, until he feels her body relax, until he feels her falling into sleep. He sings to let her know he’s there, to stay anchored to the earth, to keep from laughing or crying in amazement that he is lying with Alice in his arms, he sings as if music could keep her alive, as if music could feed her soul, as if music could weave a protective spell around her to survive these days and these weeks and these months and these years, he sings as if he could give her a piece of himself, which will ring inside of her like a bell, like a promise, like hope whenever she needs him; and in his singing, he promises her every single thing he can think of, and more.

Your circumstances will lie to you. Your emotions will lie to you. Even other people will lie to you. But not God. And because of this, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19). Your identity is secure. Nothing going on in your life can change it.

Do you remember those times as a kid when you could hardly sleep on Christmas Eve because you were so excited about opening presents in the morning? That anticipation showed that you had no doubt. We should have an even greater anticipation of Jesus. If you are not “eagerly waiting for Him” (Heb. 9:28), something is off. Ask God to restore hope in your life. Not the kind of “hope” where you vaguely wish something would happen, but the kind of hope that anchors your soul (Heb. 6:19). Meditate on His promises and pray for faith.

You may have ideas about how others see you but you are not defined by their perceptions You are not an object under someone else's magnifying glass whose only purpose is to be observed You are a living, breathing human being with a beautiful soul that is on a hope-anchored journey of learning what it means to be whole

Things I've Learned in 18 Years of Life   1) True love is not something found, rather [sic] something encountered. You can’t go out and look for it. The person you marry and the person you love could easily be two different people. So have a beautiful life while waiting for God to bring along your once-in-a-lifetime love. Don't allow yourself to settle for anything less than them. Stop worrying about who you're going to marry because God's already on the front porch watching your grandchildren play.   2) God WILL give you more than you can handle, so you can learn to lean on him in times of need. He won't tempt you more than you can handle, though. So don't lose hope. Hope anchors the soul.   3) Remember who you are and where you came from. Remember that you are not from this earth. You are a child of heaven, you're invaluable, you are beautiful. Carry yourself that way.   4) Don't put your faith in humanity, humanity is inherently flawed. We are all imperfect people created and loved by a perfect God. Perfect. So put your faith in Him.   5) I fail daily, and that is why I succeed.   6) Time passes, and nothing and everything changes. Don't live life half asleep. Don't drag your soul through the days. Feel everything you do. Be there physically and mentally. Do things that make you feel this way as well.   7) Live for beauty. We all need beauty, get it where you can find it. Clothing, paintings, sculptures, music, tattoos, nature, literature, makeup. It's all art and it's what makes us human. Same as feeling the things we do. Stay human.   8) If someone makes you think, keep them. If someone makes you feel, keep them.   9) There is nothing the human brain cannot do. You can change anything about yourself that you want to. Fight for it. It's all a mental game.   10) God didn’t break our chains for us to be bound again. Alcohol, drugs, depression, addiction, toxic relationships, monotony and repetition, they bind us. Break those chains. Destroy your past and give yourself new life like God has given you.   11) This is your life. Your struggle, your happiness, your sorrow, and your success. You do not need to justify yourself to anyone. You owe no one an explanation for the choices that you make and the position you are in. In the same vein, respect yourself by not comparing your journey to anyone else's.   12) There is no wrong way to feel.   13) Knowledge is everywhere, keep your eyes open. Look at how diverse and wonderful this world is. Are you going to miss out on beautiful people, places, experiences, and ideas because you are close-minded? I sure hope not.   14) Selfless actions always benefit you more than the recipient.   15) There is really no room for regret in this life. Everything happens for a reason. If you can't find that reason, accept there is one and move on.   16) There is room, however, for guilt. Resolve everything when it first comes up. That's not only having integrity, but also taking care of your emotional well-being.   17) If the question is ‘Am I strong enough for this?’ The answer is always, ‘Yes, but not on your own.’   18) Mental health and sanity above all.   19) We love because He first loved us. The capacity to love is the ultimate gift, the ultimate passion, euphoria, and satisfaction. We have all of that because He first loved us. If you think about it in those terms, it is easy to love Him. Just by thinking of how much He loves us.   20) From destruction comes creation. Beauty will rise from the ashes.   21) Many things can cause depression. Such as knowing you aren't becoming the person you have the potential to become. Choose happiness and change. The sooner the better, and the easier.   22) Half of happiness is as simple as eating right and exercising. You are one big chemical reaction. So are your emotions. Give your body the right reactants to work with and you'll be satisfied with the products.

we must never move our gaze of hope and longing away from fellowship with God. He is guaranteed—a sure and steady anchor for our souls—and he is the perfect Friend. In

Either we have hope within us or we don’t; it is a dimension of the soul; it’s not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart; it transcends the world that is immediately experienced, and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but, rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

What a hope! What an anchor for the soul facing any storm! God reigns supreme, above all. He is in control of everything and nothing happens in this life without His knowledge and eternal purpose. That is dynamite right there.

Faith in Jesus Christ and following His teachings give us a firm hope, and this hope becomes a solid anchor to our souls. We can become steadfast and immovable. We can have lasting inner peace; we can enter into the rest of the Lord.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

I once was a stranger to grace and to God, I knew not my danger, and felt not my load; Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree, Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me. I oft read with pleasure, to sooth or engage, Isaiah’s wild measure and John’s simple page; But e’en when they pictured the blood sprinkled tree Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me. Like tears from the daughters of Zion that roll, I wept when the waters went over His soul; Yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree Jehovah Tsidkenu—’twas nothing to me. When free grace awoke me, by light from on high, Then legal fears shook me, I trembled to die; No refuge, no safety in self could I see— Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be. My terrors all vanished before the sweet Name; My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came To drink at the fountain, life giving and free— Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me. Jehovah Tsidkenu! my treasure and boast, Jehovah Tsidkenu! I ne’er can be lost; In Thee I shall conquer by flood and by field, My cable, my anchor, my breast-plate and shield! Even treading the valley, the shadow of death, This “watchword” shall rally my faltering breath; For while from life’s fever my God sets me free, Jehovah Tsidkenu, my death song shall be.

If I hope in anything or anyone less than One who has power over suffering and, ultimately, death, I am doomed to final disappointment. Suffering will drive me to hopelessness. What character I have will disintegrate. It is the hope of Christ that makes it possible for us to persevere in times of tribulation and distress. We have an anchor for our souls that rests in the One who has gone before us and conquered.

She was a young thing, a child really, full of hope and light, who’s only friends were the shadows on the walls. Others would have found the darkness that she traversed lacking in shadows, but she exuded an unearthly radiance, lighting the world with every step and bringing life to the shadows that lived only in the twilight between worlds. It was here that her friends came out to play and fed her soul with their love of her joy and the light she bore. For without light, there could be no shadows. He, a man living in the light, found nothing in the darkness, though his eyes scoured it constantly for a kindred spirit. Always, he searched the void for someone to cling to, some kind of anchor for his soul. For he walked in the light only with help of a mask to hide behind. Under it hid an ethereal animal, primal in its needs and desires, which could not stand the light of day. If only there was one who could give him light without destroying the darkness that filled him so that he could finally be free.

I am nothing--nothing--nothing. She was clinging to that, she found, as to a sort of anchor, because it kept her from having to face the terrible possibility that God Himself was not, and the realization of God's nothingness would be the final horror that could not be borne. Yet as time passed she knew that that possibility, too, must be faced. She must let go of the very last thing left her, the knowledge of her own nothingness, and face it. And she let go, and looked around for God and did not find Him; and then there was nothing, except the dark night. But there was the dark night. Very slowly she became conscious of it, and then she found that she was hugging it to her, wrapping herself in it as though it were a cloak to hide her in this hour of her humiliation. For a long while the night was all that she had, and then suddenly, like a sword stabbing the darkness, came a trill of music. It was a bird welcoming the dawn. That, too, was added. She drew back one of the curtains of her bed and saw a patch of grey light where the window was. That also. During the hours of the night she had been completely stripped, and now one by one a few things were being handed to her for the clothing of her naked, shivering, humiliated soul. For a few things one must have to make one decent if one was to step forth again upon the highway. For that, obviously, impossible though the task seemed to her at this moment, was what she had to do as soon as the full day came, because there wasn't anything else that she could do. She had to go on living and serving, with the living and serving stripped of all pleasure...But there would be something. There would be darkness and light, night and day, both sweet things, and music linking them together. The full glory of the dawn chorus seemed all about her...it was full day by the time she pulled back the muslin curtains that covered her window and flung it wide and leaned out, the scent of the spring earth rushing up to meet her. That also was given back...By whom?

III. Ah Vastness of Pines Ah vastness of pines, murmur of waves breaking, slow play of lights, solitary bell, twilight falling in your eyes, toy doll, earth-shell, in whom the earth sings! In you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them as you desire, and you send it where you will. Aim my road on your bow of hope and in a frenzy I will free my flock of arrows. On all sides I see you waist of fog, and yousilence hunts my afflicted hours; my kisses anchor, and my moist desire nests in you with your arms of transparent stone. Ah your mysterious voice that love tolls and darkens in the resonant and dying evening! Thus in deep hours I have seen, over the fields, the ears of wheat tolling in the mouth of the wind.

Since most houses today have running water, the ease with which most Americans can give water to a guest obscures the point that everyone in the biblical culture understood: “cold water” came only from the town well or cistern because water in jars at home warmed up very quickly in the heat. Giving a cup of cold water meant inconveniencing yourself and walking to the town well carrying a container, perhaps waiting in line to draw the water, lifting the water up out of the ground, and then carrying the water back to the house—all so someone could quench his thirst. The fact that Christ connects giving cold water with rewards to be received in the future is a powerful testimony to the value of even the most seemingly mundane good works in the eyes of God.

We say that we mourn the dead, and there is some truth in that. We lament the flower frozen in full bloom, cut off at the moment of promise, or another long wilted, whose slow fading and drawn-out, painful diminishment cast a shadow over a vibrant and glorious past. And yet. Once the eyes are closed and the heart is stilled, we come to understand that the worst of the pain has passed. For them. The dead have no more use for pain, for memory or regret. Regret is for the living. And so when we stand at the bedside, the graveside, the casket, our mourning is less for the beloved departed than it is for ourselves. We mourn the missed opportunity, the word unspoken or spoken in haste, the hole in our lives and the unsettling of our souls, our own disappointments and the loss of innocence. We gaze upon the stillness that is unending and feel our self-importance crack and the myth of our immortality smash. We stare upon the face of death to see ourselves more clearly, to satisfy our curiosity, to make peace with the inescapable. We hold our breath, try to imagine what it would be like never to take another and what the departed know now that we don’t. We try to conjure what the life we have left would look like if such knowledge were ours. We try to imagine ourselves kind and expansive and giving, balanced and patient, more honest, more thankful, more peaceful, content with what we have, mindless of what we have not. We imagine ourselves happy. For a moment, we believe we can be. And then, because we can’t help ourselves, we breathe and, breathing, are reminded of the many other things we cannot help. The faith of a moment fades and hope is replaced by the intimate knowledge of our imperfections. Lonely, weeping, we stand with our feet anchored to the ground, watching our better angels fly above us and beyond us to time out of mind, and we mourn.

The best part of waking up to a Christmas morning is perhaps to know that it's just a few more days to another year, to another whole new year of hopes and surprises, expectations and learnings, to a bunch of mad happy days and a dozen of grey days with despair and gloom but above all days to know Life, some more of our Soul, days to be Human and mortal in our very bones. Just like the first ray of Sunshine always finds us out of the darkest hour, Christmas literally shows us how even the coldest and darkest of nights be alive in spirit, breathing through love and light, breathing in more of Life to the days to come, and even when we don't know what might unfold in the days to come, we wish each other a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, because Hope is the cup that fills our Christmas morning the most. And as we keep walking along this wondrous day and this beautiful journey of Life, may we keep reminding our mind what our Heart already knows as the anchoring truth of Hope, Life is full of little pleasures.

The myth that morality and fidelity are old-fashioned and trite can imprison more than just one individual as generations are affected by the choices perpetuated by this lie. The myth that withholding judgment or having charity means that all values are relative and should be given equal importance or loyalty creates a heavy chain that eventually traps a person in doubt and disaffection, leaving him or her to be constantly "driven with the wind and tossed" (see James 1:6). However, confidence that Christ honors those who honor him (see 1 Samuel 2:30) provides an anchor to our souls (see Ether 12:4) whereby we are capable of giving affirmative answers to those who question the "reason of the hope that is in [us]" (1 Peter 3:15). I remember one of my saddest moments as a faculty member at BYU. One of my students came to me in emotional tatters. She had come to BYU looking for a supportive community that shared her values, something she had not enjoyed being the only Mormon in her high school. Instead her peers at BYU teased, sneered at, and demeaned her because she was not willing to watch an R-rated movie. How proud I was of her! Despite the hurt of rejection "by her own," her faith carried her through the social prison created by her peers. To "stand in holy places, and be not moved" (D&C 87:8) in today's world requires faith, courage, poise, and patience.

For a team facing a 12-run deficit, the game is all but over. Almost always. Three times in major league history, though, a club has come from down by a dozen to win. The Chicago White Sox were the first in 1911; fourteen years later, the Philadelphia Athletics duplicated the feat. Then seventy-six years would pass before it happened again. Enter the 2001 Cleveland Indians, battling for their sixth playoff spot in seven years. Hosting the red-hot Seattle Mariners, who would win a major league record 116 games that season, the Tribe found themselves trailing 12–0 after just three innings. In the middle of the seventh, Seattle led 14–2—at which point the Indians began their historic comeback. Scoring three in the seventh, four in the eighth, and five in the ninth, Cleveland forced extra innings. In the bottom of the eleventh, utility man Jolbert Cabrera slapped a broken-bat single to score Kenny Lofton for one of the more remarkable wins in the annals of baseball. On August 6, 2001, not even a 12-run deficit could stop the Cleveland Indians. Those of us who follow Jesus Christ can expect even greater victories. “I am convinced,” the apostle Paul wrote, “that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39). If you’re deep in the hole today, take heart. As God’s child, you’re always still in the game. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. HEBREWS

These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, not any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

Most of these reveal a psychological shrewdness about human fallibility: • A man of genius is but seldom ruined but by himself. • If you are idle, be not solitary; if you are solitary, be not idle. • There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by. • All censure of self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare. • Man’s chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature. • No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library. • Very few can boast of hearts which they dare lay open to themselves. • Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage you think is particularly fine, strike it out. • Every man naturally persuades himself he can keep his resolutions; nor is he convinced of his imbecility but by length of time and frequency of experiment. Through his moral essays, Johnson was able to impose order on the world, to anchor his experiences in the stability of the truth. He had to still himself in order to achieve an objective perception of the world. When people are depressed, they often feel overcome by a comprehensive and yet hard to pin down sadness. But Johnson jumps directly into the pain, pins it down, dissects it, and partially disarms it. In his essay on sorrow he observes that most passions drive you to their own extinction. Hunger leads to eating and satiety, fear leads to flight, lust leads to sex. But sorrow is an exception. Sorrow doesn’t direct you toward its own cure. Sorrow builds upon sorrow. That’s because sorrow is “that state of mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past, without looking forward to the future, an incessant wish that something were otherwise than it has been, a tormenting and harassing want of some enjoyment or possession we have lost.” Many try to avoid sorrow by living timid lives. Many try to relieve sorrow by forcing themselves to go to social events. Johnson does not approve of these stratagems. Instead, he advises, “The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment…. Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life and is remedied by exercise and motion.

These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind, With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days, And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompence. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still, sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue. And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods, And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense, The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being.

There's hope for the broken, and this is true even if it's our own choices that broke us. Our hope, the very anchor of our souls, is standing on the porch. And His eyes are stretching out through time and space and they are singularly focused on you. On me. Here's the deal--only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. Period. Any other voice is a lie from the pit of hell. When Jesus said, 'It is finished,' He wasn't kidding. Then and there, death and sin lost all legal claim over you.

All that remains is for me to make a sad observation. Like so many other creatures that once embellished life and brought hope, house spirits have vanished and with them the souls of our houses have fled, never to return. Homes have sunk into anonymity; building rituals have almost entirely disappeared; prefabricated industrial materials have replaced the quest for attentive selection of materials that were wrought with love; the meaning of ornaments are no longer known and the moon, sun, stars and crosses have disappeared from our facades; radiators have replaced the hearth and stove; our corners have become little more than dust collectors; and there is no longer anything concealed beneath our thresholds. We have transformed into rootless wanderers with no fire or place to call our own. The individual no longer has any attachment to a house that has been passed down for generations. In loosing all of this, we have lost a piece of ourselves, one of our most solid anchors, and like dead leaves carried by the wind, we settle one day here, another day there, driven by the whims of our professions, but we no longer bring the embers from our hearths with us, and the surviving spirits weep in abandoned houses.

Against both of these temptations the New Testament warns us with its insistent call for a patient hope, a hope which is — on the one hand — confident and sure, an anchor of the soul, and on the other hand patient and enduring.

The symbol of the anchor is powerful because of what it stands for: hope. The book of Hebrews speaks of “this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19). That’s a game changer. A boat that is anchored can be battered, but it won’t be moved. Because of Jesus, we have hope. And because of hope, even in the midst of the worst storms of this life, we have an anchor for our souls.

He clung to his pain as an anchor to the physical world, to the husk that housed his soul, too precious to be cast aside, yet the pulse and colour leeched from his wounded body as surely as his blood, and hope foundered in the face of that inevitable end.

but I believed with all my heart that God was involved in some way and that He would do a “miracle.” I would somehow be healed, perhaps lead many others to Christ in the hospital, and lots of “fruit” would be produced from the whole experience, etc.

Though everything in my life is upside down, and I don’t understand a thing that You are doing, I will still hope in Your Love and faithfulness.

Our Father and our God, thank You for making my soul immortal too. When I think of eternity in heaven, I can see the rainbow of hope around my future, and I can feel Your comforting hand holding mine. Thank You for hope, Lord. I pray through Jesus, who is the anchor of my soul. Amen.

Hope is the anchor of the soul; keep it strong, and it will keep you steady.

We are preparing our hearts to receive the hope that alone can be the anchor of our souls. One day soon you will step into a renewed earth ... Joy will be yours. How do we open our hearts to this after so much pain and disappointment? We have lost many things as we've passed through the battlefields of this war-torn world ... One of our greatest losses is the gift of wonder, the doorway into the kingdom heart. But each of us has special places and favorite stories that are still able to reawaken it. We love being taken into the homeliness of the hobbit's shire, but our hearts begin to race when Frodo learns he must flee and never return. Wonder grows as we push farther into the unknown realms -- the Old Forest ... Rivendell enchants...

If I hope in anything or anyone less than One who has power over suffering and, ultimately, death, I am doomed to final disappointment. Suffering will drive me to hopelessness. What character I have will disintegrate. It is the hope of Christ that makes it possible for us to persevere in times of tribulation and distress. We have an anchor for our souls that rests in the One who has gone before us and conquered.

Hope is an anchor for the soul.

Romans 4:18, “hope against hope.

Faith gives strength to my bones. Grace gives power to my spirit. Hopes give anchor to my soul.

Hope is the soul anchor.

Your circumstances will lie to you. Your emotions will lie to you. Even other people will lie to you. But not God. And because of this, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (6:19). Your identity is secure. Nothing going on in your life can change it. So how does God answer that question? What does he say to us about who we truly are? Let’s look at what he says is true of you, no matter what you are going through today. You Are Loved Worrying

Hope anchors the soul.

Hope anchors the soul.

There are no names for these deep places that try our souls.  Some are cavernous and filled with noxious fumes.  Some are in undersea canyons where the pressure is insurmountable.  Some are in outer space void of oxygen and gravity, and some are on ice-covered mountains, deep just the same.  These are inhospitable places where no flesh can survive.  Yet, it isn’t the flesh but the spirit that finds itself in these places—blinded by darkness, gasping for air, crushed by pressure, adrift with no hopes of an anchor.  In spite of all of this, we survive but not only for ourselves.  Even if on hands and knees, we must return from these deep places clutching in our bloody fists something of value for humanity. 

We are all planted in God's vineyard and our lives are filled with potentials and purpose and we have all been given the hopes to anchor our lives even in the most disappointed times. So God is waiting to see what you and I will make out of the raw materials that He has given to us. He is waiting to see what we will make out of the discouragement and disappointment. I believe that in those deepest places of disappointment that the greatest grace will manifest.

How strange to realize that she'd come on the Herald of Hope chapel car thinking she could bring hope to the people of Finch. Her heart swelled with the knowledge she now embraced. Only God could truly bring the hope these people needed - the hope she needed. He was the hope that anchored their souls. And He was the anchor that would hold the two of them, their children, and their children's children fast to Him.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where our forerunner, Jesus, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek.

Hope is the beacon in the dark night. Its light shines through the storm of your soul, and when you allow God to anchor your hope, you will realize He’s greater than any situation you will ever encounter.

Hope is the beacon in the dark night. Its light shines through the storm of your soul, and when you allow God to anchor your hope, you will realize He’s greater than any situation you will ever encounter.

Its supporters argued that they were anchored in other basic laws, although equality was not explicitly mentioned anywhere and was only extrapolated by the interpretation of Israel’s Supreme Court. This strengthened the conviction of many Arab citizens that Israel could not be both Jewish and democratic. The law also effectively downgraded Arabic from a second state language to one with a “special status.” It described promoting Jewish settlement as a “national value,” without specifying where. Its clauses affirmed the openness of the state for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles and the status of the flag; the national anthem, “Hatikvah”; and the Hebrew calendar, alongside the Gregorian one, as official calendars of Israel. Netanyahu hailed the passage of the law as “a defining moment in the annals of Zionism and the history of the state of Israel.” Arab representatives ripped up copies of the bill and denounced it as the anchoring of racism, fascism, discrimination, and Jewish privilege. Ahmad Tibi and Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List, an alliance of predominantly Arab parties, called it apartheid. Jewish critics, Jabotinskyites among them, said the Knesset would have done better to stick to Israel’s Declaration of Independence of 1948, which did ensure complete equality of social and political rights for “all its inhabitants.

The name Providence, which Mr. Williams gave both to his town and colony, and the word HOPE, in their public seal, with the figure of an ANCHOR therein, were designed to hold forth the HOPE that he had in God, that he would succeed the great work that he was engaged in, of establishing a civil government upon the principles of true freedom to soul and body.

Lord, I pray that You would give (husband’s name) a vision for his future. Help him to understand that Your plans for him are for good and not evil—to give him a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:11). Fill him with the knowledge of Your will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that he may have a walk worthy of You, fully pleasing You, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of You (Colossians 1:9-10). May he live with a clear leading from Your Spirit and not walk in doubt and fear of what may happen. Help him to mature and grow in You daily, submitting to You all his dreams and desires, knowing that “the things which are impossible with men are possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Give him God-ordained goals and show him how to conduct himself in a way that always invests in his future. I pray that he will be active in service for You all the days of his life. Keep him from losing his sense of purpose and fill him with hope for his future as an “anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19). Give him “his heart’s desire” (Psalm 21:2) and “the heritage of those who fear Your name” (Psalm 61:5). Plant him firmly in Your house and keep him fresh and flourishing and bearing fruit into old age (Psalm 92:13-14). And when it comes time for him to leave this earth and go to be with You, may he have such a strong vision for his eternal future that it makes his transition smooth, painless, and accompanied by peace and joy. Until that day, I pray he will find the vision for his future in You. In Jesus’ name I pray.

God will take every cry you’ve uttered and arrange those sounds into a glorious song. He will add it to His symphony of compassion. You will have a starring solo in which those notes birthed from tears will help ease the ache of another. Those around you will see you standing on a solid rock and hear the glorious echoes of good things bellowing from your belly. The enemy will shake and quake and shrink back afraid. He’s terrified of that girl. He’s terrified of you. You are anchored to the hope of God that so few ever truly find. You, dear longsuffering soul, are a Job of your time. One who will be misjudged and misunderstood. The enemy will try to trip you and rip you to shreds with the hurtful hisses that all this longsuffering is for nothing. Don’t you dare listen.

as much as we are called into fellowship with others, we must never move our gaze of hope and longing away from fellowship with God. He is guaranteed—a sure and steady anchor for our souls—and he is the perfect Friend.

Hebrews 6:19 tells us that hope is the anchor of the soul. Hope is the force that keeps us steady in a time of trial.

Hebrews 6:19 and read aloud, “‘We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

[The Bible] tells us that hope is the anchor of the soul. Hope is the force that keeps us steady in a time of trial. Don't ever stop hoping. If you do, you're going to have a miserable life.

Now in this sense also, I take it, Peter affirms that believers have been begotten again unto a living hope. In all probability the representation, while applicable to all believers, was influenced to some extent by the apostle’s memory of his own experience. There had been a moment in his previous life when all at once, in the twinkling of an eye as it were, he had been translated from a world of despair into a world of hope. It was when the fact of the resurrection of Christ flashed upon him. Under the two-fold bitterness of his denial of the Lord and of the tragedy of the cross, utter darkness had settled down upon his soul. Everything he expected from the future in connection with Jesus had been completely blotted out. Perhaps he had even been in danger of losing the old hope which as a pious Israelite he cherished before he knew the Lord. And then suddenly, the whole aspect of things had been changed. The risen Christ appeared to him and by his appearance wrought the resurrection of everything that had gone down with him into the grave. No, there was far more here for Peter than a mere resurrection of what he had hoped in before. It was the birth of something new that now, for the first time, disclosed itself to his perception. His hope was not given back to him in its old form. It was regenerated in the act of restoration. Previously it had been dim, undefined, subject to fluctuations; sometimes eager and enthusiastic, sometimes cast down and languishing; in many respects earthly, carnal and incompletely spiritualized. Apart from all of these defects, his previous hope had been a bare one, which could only sustain itself by projection into the future, but which lacked that vital support and nourishment in a present substantial reality without which no religious hope can permanently subsist. Through the resurrection of Christ, all these faults were corrected; all these deficiencies supplied. For Peter looked upon the risen Christ as the beginning, the firstfruits of that new world of God in which the believer’s hope is anchored. Jesus did not rise as he had been before, but transformed, glorified, eternalized, the possessor and author of a transcendent heavenly life at one and the same time, the revealer, the sample and the pledge of the future realization of the true kingdom of God. No prolonged course of training could have been more effective for purifying and spiritualizing the apostle’s hope than this single, instantaneous experience; this bursting upon him of a new form of eternal life, concrete and yet all-comprehensive in its prophetic significance. Well might the apostle say that he himself had been begotten again unto a new hope through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. And, of course, what was true of him was even more emphatically true of the readers of his epistle, who, if they were believers from the Gentiles, before their conversion had lived entirely without hope and without God in the world.

Our hope is meant to be the anchor of our souls, to keep us steady in the middle of the storms of life.

Father, I want Your custom plan and path for my life. You know my deepest desires and my needs. You know what needs reorganizing and what needs to go, entirely. Continue to shine Your love into the unlit corners of my heart and soul. Lead me to the right programs, people, professionals, books, messages, music, art, and movement that will help me to make progress. Help me not to put my hope in these things or in the promise of people but to continually remember that my hope is anchored in You. May I always keep in step with the Spirit. Help me to step away from the illusion of perfection and embrace the process. Open my eyes to progress and teach me to celebrate the newly created space in my soul. Amen.