As we struggle to acknowledge our need for help, it becomes very important that we have hope. We need to have hope that the help we need is available. Without this hope, we will not have the strength or courage to get help.

The good news is that the resources we need for recovery are not just available, they are abundant. We don’t mean that there is an abundance of support groups or treatment programs - sometimes these resources can be scarce. But these are tools - important tools, but not the fundamental ingredients of recovery. Fundamentally, help is available and abundant because God’s grace and love are abundant. There is no shortage, no scarcity, of grace and love. All of God’s grace is available to us. All of God’s love is offered freely to us.

No matter what our struggles are, God is prepared, ready, wanting to help. And if God is for us, who of any particular consequence can be against us? This is the fundamental reason for optimism about recovery. God is not indifferent. God is not impotent. Rather, God is continually, compassionately reaching out to us. And God is powerfully able to save and heal us.

Of course, it is not always easy to hang on to this hope. It is not always easy to remember who God is. Fortunately we do not need enormous amounts of hope to make progress in recovery. According to Jesus, only a speck (a ‘mustard seed’) of hope will do. And, also fortunately, there are some practical things we can do to nurture the hope which is growing within us.

The psalmists often nurtured hope by recounting the ways in which God had met their needs in the past. Or by recounting the ways God had met the needs of others. This discipline of remembering nurtures hope because it reminds us who God is. It reminds us that God is powerful and loving; that God is active in our lives- saving, healing, restoring, comforting.

There are many ways we might put the discipline of remembering into practice. We remember who God is every time we take the bread and wine of communion. We remember who God is when we read the stories of Jesus’s healing ministry. We remember who God is when we attend twelve step meetings or support groups and listen to the stories of others’ healing and recovery. And we remember who God is when we recount past experiences of God’s help and healing in our lives.