so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who,
through faith and patience, are inheriting the promises.
If we follow in the footsteps of the Jesus and the saints we too will inherit the promises. We are called to embrace the gift we have been given with our whole being, just as they did. We are to strive to enter the rest of God, to demonstrate eagerness for the fulfillment of our hope. When we forget either the goal or the means by which the goal is possible we do tend to become sluggish. The rest of God is not something that any effort of ours can earn. The fulfillment of hope until the end is not based on our confidence in ourselves.
So when God wanted to give the heirs of his promise
an even clearer demonstration of the immutability of his purpose,
he intervened with an oath
We will not come closer to the rest prepared for the elect by God except insofar as God himself makes us ready for it and draws us to it. Our part is to cling to his promise with faith and patience. With this attitude we won't become sluggish and risk turning away or failing to achieve that rest. Instead, we will grow in a faith, for he himself gives us this growth (see First Corinthians 3:6). It will become lively enough that we are able to remain eager for our hope, even while we patiently endure the challenges of this life.
This we have as an anchor of the soul
Our hope in God is different from any merely human hope because it is impossible for God to lie or to fail. We can therefore "be strongly encouraged to hold fast" to that hope. It is not merely a wish, something we would really like if it happened to happen eventually. There is no sense that we will get any closer to it by wishing harder. Instead, it is a promise from one who cannot lie. It comes with such assurance that it can be for us an anchor that holds us fast when we might otherwise go adrift. The result is indeed something we desire, but it is something even greater than we can ask or imagine (see Ephesians 3:20). Indeed it is something so unimaginably great that hope in the one who made the promise is the only way we can hold it and cling to it.
which reaches into the interior behind the veil,
where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner
Our hope reaches beyond the veil into the very presence of God himself. Jesus opened the way for us so that even now, through faith, hope, and love we can begin to experience it. The more we let God build us up in such an active faith, a living hope, and a constant charity, the more we will be anchored in a place where no storm can touch us.
We tend to narrow the horizons of hope, which is the same thing as cutting the cord of our anchor. We begin to believe that we were made for the sabbath rather than the sabbath for us. We forget that the whole reason for creation was because God wanted to be able to lavish his love upon us freely and let us freely respond. Instead, we quickly convince ourselves that God made us because he needed us, because there was something we must do for him. This doubt in the goodness of God's intentions is diametrically opposed to the hope we are meant to have in him.
Let us pray to have a greater confidence in the promises of God today. Let us ask that he himself make his hope the anchor that solidifies our lives with him at the center. We could list his promises endlessly, but we'll leave our reflection today with just one more: he who has begun a good work in us will bring it to completion (see Philippians 1:6). Let us be anchored, brothers and sisters!
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