This has been a year of loss: lost freedoms, lost normalcy, lost expectations — lost loved ones. Such hard times are not new. And yet each time life gets hard, we face the same temptation — to fall into hopelessness. And we often do.

I know this to be true. Not as well as some, but better than some others. I’ve gone through seasons in which all the important things in life seemed to be going wrong — my marriage, my sense of purpose and direction, my walk with God. These seasons aren’t simply seasons of feeling down. They’re marked by the oppressive weight of believing there is no reason to hope because there’s no way things could get better.