As we learned back on Day 26, hope is essential to the Christian’s piety. According to the Apostle Paul, we will not have the faith in Christ or the love for others that we need if we don’t have a secure hope in the Lord (Colossians 1:4-5). If we don’t have a hope of the hereafter we will neither live for Christ nor care for others as we should in the here and now. We will, as Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 15:32, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

Just as it is essential to the Christian’s piety, hope in the Lord is equally essential to the Christian’s purity. In 1 John 3:1-3, the Apostle John explains how every possessor of the “blessed hope”; that is, everyone hoping for the soon coming of Christ, as Paul teaches in Titus 2:13, will “purify himself, even as [Christ] is pure.” 

How can a genuine hope of Christ’s imminent return not affect one’s living? If you sincerely believe and hope that Jesus will come today, how will you live your life today? Will you not attempt to live a pure life in obedience to Christ so that you will not be found unfaithful at His coming?

Finally, the Bible also teaches us that hope in the Lord is essential to the Christian’s perseverance. According to the Apostle Paul, the reason Christians don’t “lose heart” and persevere through this world’s “light” and momentary “afflictions” is because of our hope of “eternal glory” (2 Corinthians 4:16-18). Being focused on invisible, heavenly, and eternal things, we are little affected any longer by visible, earthly, and temporal things. 

According to Hebrews 12:2, Jesus endured His suffering in this world, even the suffering of the cross, because of “the joy that was set before him.” Likewise, Paul teaches that Christians endure their suffering in this world because of the joy (glory) that is set before us.

Being essential to the Christian’s piety, purity, and perseverance, the importance of our hope in the Lord cannot be overstated. It is a fitting climax, therefore, to this magnificent psalm. It is no mere appendix added by David as an afterthought, but the pinnacle reached when the soul is finally weaned, calmed, and quieted.

That the calmed soul has reached the pinnacle of hope in the Lord will be proven in the life by piety, purity, and perseverance.