By Mallory Mattingly
Atlanta Falcons rookie running back Nathan Carter shared a message of hope with his Instagram followers.
“I remember draft night like it was yesterday,” Carter began the Dec. 4 post. “Waiting and wishfully thinking my name would be called and my face would show up on that screen. In a worldly sense, we call this hope. I hoped to hear my name, but I didn’t have a confident expectation that it would happen. Most of us see hope this way: not as something certain, but as wishful thinking or dreaming.”
“Hope consists of three things: desire, object, and expectation,” he continued. “Hope begins with desire, is directed toward an object we believe can fulfill that desire, and carries an expectation of how we think that fulfillment will come. On draft night, my desire to hear my name led me to place the object of my hope in the teams, with the expectation that they would call my phone.”
“I realized my hope was rooted in my situation, not in the God who controls it. When what I hoped for did not happen, I grew frustrated and confused,” Carter recalled.
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“My hope was misplaced, driven by my own desires and centered on my goals,” the running back added. “A lot of us live this way. We base our hope on our desires: ‘I hope I get married.’ ‘I hope I get this job.’ ‘I hope I get healed.’ These aren’t bad desires, but this kind of worldly hope is filled with doubt, uncertainty, and selfishness. We hope in things fueled by our own timing and the way we want our desires to be fulfilled. This type of hope will always disappoint and fail us.”
Carter then spoke about the hope that we have in Jesus. He referenced 1 Peter 1:3, which reads, “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
This hope that Peter discussed is “secured by the character of the One in whom our hope rests. This hope is not wishful thinking; it is a confident expectation rooted in Christ’s character and promises.”
“This hope holds us steady in everything because it is anchored in a Savior who is alive,” Carter wrote. “It endures every circumstance, outlasts every disappointment, and shines even in a broken, sinful, dark world. We rest in the God of hope, who is “an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb. 6:19).
“Shifting our hope to Christ means letting Him shape our desires, making Him the object of our hope, and trusting His perfect timing and plan,” the athlete concluded. “You can’t survive in this world without hope, and without Jesus, you have none.”
Though his draft night hopes went unfulfilled, Carter signed as a free agent with the Falcons in August.
“Only about 15 undrafted free agents across the NFL make Week 1 rosters each season. Carter’s rise is both rare and remarkable,” Democrat & Chronicle said of his position with the team.
Though our wordly hopes can go unsatisfied, we can rejoice that our ultimate hope is in Jesus and His sacrifice for us on the cross.
The Falcons face off against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Thursday, Dec. 11, at 8:15 p.m. EST.
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