"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."
(Jeremiah 29:11)

What is your dearest hope? What will make it possible?

Is there anything that would make it impossible?

If you are a believer in God, you may have decided to ask Him what He thinks. It always seems to surprise us when we find out that He knows more than we do.

God knows your finest talents and your deepest longings. He knows your greatest flaws, and how to make them work in your favor.

History is full of lives that God turned around, dreams that He made come true--and plans that He had that weren't our plans, but were ever so much more ambitious.

Sometimes in the short run, it doesn't seem that way. I know one woman who as a teenager, longed to be beautiful, but wasn't. Why do others get this gift and not me? she wondered.

Years later, as a woman, she understood why God had withheld that gift from her. She finally understood that the need to be physically attractive had been unhealthy, almost idolatrous, and to have been granted beauty as a young woman would have spelled disaster, for she would have given in to the worst excesses of vanity. She realized that she would have minimized her talents as a scholar and devoted her energies to Cheerleading 101. She instead became a talented writer, a creative mother--and very stylish and attractive in her middle years, to her great surprise and delight.

Almost exactly the same sentiment came from a man I knew, who had never quite made the sports teams he longed to be on, even though he possessed some natural skills. But only after he was almost a grandfather did he understand that, since he had devoted himself instead to his studies, he had been able to go to an Ivy League school and on to a successful career. Because of his financial success, he had become a major benefactor of some of the most worthwhile charitable endeavors in his community, which had become very meaningful elements of his life.

He realized that many of those young men who were the sports heroes of his old high school had never achieved the long-term success he had, because most had neglected intellectual pursuits of any kind. But because he didn't get his "dream come true," his dearest dreams really had been fulfilled and they were dreams that as a teenager, he didn't even yet know he had.

Sometimes God knows our hearts much better than we do.

He also knows what our dreams may cost. He knows the heartbreak of rejection, the pain of the homosexual who longs to change, the guilt after abortion. And the frustration of struggling with our sometimes greatest foe: ourselves.

Patience, faith and hope are not trite phrases, but ideas that bear the weight of human suffering on lighter wings. God can work miracles in young lives, too, if we just get out of the way and let Him go to work.

Those first dreams are often the ones we should wait onto let them season. To let them saunter on past the masks and jeers of youth. And to let God have a chance to shape them into something we can live with for a lifetime.

Where there is God, there is truth. And with truth, comes hope eternal.

"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see."
(Hebrews 11:1)