Man cannot be trusted here with the endurance of any earthly things. They become idols, and must be broken; for “the idols He will utterly abolish.” Our cherished hopes of a bright future here—of a long life, of health, of comfort, of money, of prosperity—must be checked, else we should make earth our home and our heaven, forgetting the glory to be revealed, and the pleasures that are at God’s right hand for ever. “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten; be zealous, therefore, and repent.”

But God quenches no hope without presenting a brighter one,—one that will last for ever; for He does not mock the creature that He has made, nor wither up his fairest flowers without a reason, and that reason fraught both with wisdom and with love. He cares for us. He yearns over us. He would fain make us happy. He loves us too well to cheat us with dreams.

Man’s hope must be destroyed, that God’s hope may be built upon its ruins. The human is swept away only that the divine may come in its stead. The temporal is in mercy wrested from our grasp, that the eternal may be our portion and inheritance.

–Horatius Bonar, “What is my hope?” from How Shall I Go to God, and other readings.