Something to hang your hat on …

Grammerly.com explains the meaning of an idiom as “a phrase that, when taken as a whole, has a meaning you wouldn’t be able to deduce from the meanings of the individual words.”

We season our language with idioms in an effort to communicate clearly.

For example, there’s the idom, “something to hang your hat on.”

I think most of us can identify with the meaning of this phrase — even if you don’t own a hat. Let’s find some context for it.

In spite of the many people on social media who try to convince you you’re “stronger than you think you are,” etc., the truth is life is bigger than every one of us. Only God is all-powerful and all-knowing and can handle any situation perfectly well all the time.

The rest of us, we have our “ups and downs.” Some days are better than others, and some of us have more “up” days than others, and some of us have more “down” days than others.

All of us, on occasion, have a day when we more fully feel the press of life, and in that moment we need “something to hang our hat on.” That idiom means something (or someone) to depend on or believe in. Some days we just need something we can “hang our hat on,” that encourages us we’ll get through and to push on.

God’s Word has given us “something to hang your hat on.”

Actually, it gives us several such “things,” but here’s one you really can depend on, especially during those “down” days:

“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning,” Lamentations 3:22-23.

Because of God’s faithful and never-ending love for us, He is merciful to us. But note what this scripture says — it isn’t that God has a limited amount of mercy to see us through just portions of our lives. No, it gives us something we can truly hang our hats on: “… his mercies begin afresh each morning.”

When life presses on you a little harder on any given day, you can hang your hat on the fact that God’s mercy toward you has not been exhausted, they begin afresh every day.

Scotty