Where is Your Hope?

A few Sundays ago, a pastor spoke from the biblical book of Ruth, drawing parallels to Christmas.  “Odd,” you say?  That’s what I initially thought, but here’s where it’s not. 

Naomi had lost it all – husband, sons, land, future . . . or so she thought, and said the following (Ruth 1:20-21): “Do not call me Naomi; call me Mara, for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.  Why do you call me Naomi, since the Lord has witnessed against me and the Almighty has afflicted me?”
Sound familiar?  Have you ever felt that way? 

Maybe He had afflicted her. 

However, little did she know at the time that through the daughter-in-law that she did have (Ruth), God would provide for her in the immediate, on a daily basis, restore her joy, and one day (generations later) provide Jesus through the line of David, her great, great grandson. 

Life may be really hard for you right now.  Life might not bear you joy.  You may be suffering great loss or affliction.  Or it may not be turning out like you would have liked . . .

And then there’s Christmas. 

Aside from the celebratory and festive nature of the season, Christmas is often represented by the phrase “Peace on Earth.”  It seems a respite from the storm.  Somehow, in all our cares, worries, trials, aimlessness, despair, questions, we can set aside our worries and focus on what we do have . . . and look to Jesus. 

You may be wondering if there’s hope.  You may be wondering how you’ll get through, let alone how you’ll face tomorrow.  You may be wondering if life – if you – matter, or if anybody cares.  You may feel alone, unloved or not lovable, disgruntled, overworked, exhausted or bitter . . .  

And then there’s Jesus. 

I read a verse in the Bible about the Exodus recently, where God sees/hears the affliction of His people and sends Moses.  Jesus is the evidence that God sees, that God hears, that God cares.  Jesus is the Ultimate Solution – where God, in His mercy provided Someone to bear our sin on the cross, in our place.  He rose again and is preparing a place in Heaven for those who know Him (who have accepted His righteousness in our place for forgiveness/redemption for our sins and have made Him Lord of their lives).  He has promised to be with us always.  And one day, He will return to take us home. 

Christ’s death, resurrection and heaven mean one day it will all be over – the struggle, the grief, the pain, the loss.  One day it will all be ok. One day it will all be made right.  One day it will all resolve. 

Life is not hopeless.  It is not useless.  It is not futile or fruitless.   It is not for naught. 

Life’s not going to be easy.  Life’s not going to be a breeze.  But you can have hope . . . and that hope can get you through. 

And Christmas is a reminder of that.  It was for me a few Sunday’s ago.   

Do you know Him? 

But don’t just take my word for it.  Charles Spurgeon, a famous 20^th century preacher, had some things to say about this in Finding Peace in Life’s Storms.  The following is in a different context in the book but applies well to the topic. 

Where is your hope?  Do you believe because you can see?  That is not believing at all.  Do you believe because you can feel?  That is feeling; it is not believing.  But “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:20).  Blessed is he who believes against his feelings, yes, and hopes against hope.  It is a strange thing to hope against hope, to believe in things that are impossible, to see things that are invisible.  He who can do that has learned the art of faith . . . This is the confidence we have in God “whom having not seen, [we] love (1 Pet. 1:8). 

Let the winds blow, and billows roll,

Hope is the anchor or my soul. 

But can I by so slight a tie,

An unseen, hope, on God rely? 

Steadfast and sure, it cannot fail,

It enters deep within the veil,

It fastens on a land unknown,

And moors me to my Father’s throne.

Spurgeon states,

But Fear always finds room for complaining.  Therefore, she says, “The future, the black and gloomy future! . . .

According to Fear, our prospects are truly appalling.  However, I confess, not using her telescope, I discern no such signs of the times.  Yet Fear says so, and there may be something to it.  But even if this is so, it is counterbalanced in our minds by the belief that God, even our own God, will bless us.  Why should He change?  He has helped His church in the past.  Why not now? . . . Instead of gloomy predictions and fears, it seems to me that there is reason for the brightest expectations.  But we must fall back on the divine promise and believe that God, even our own God, will bless us in our generation as He used to do in former days. 

Remember the ship that was tossed by the storm on the Galilean lake?  There was certainly a dreary outlook for that boat.  Before long, the ship would have been driven against the rocky shore and would have sunk beneath the waves.  But this was not the case, for, walking on the waves . . . was the Man who loved the group of men on that boat, and He would not allow them to die.  It was Jesus, walking on the waves of the sea.  He came into the vessel, and immediately the calm was as profound as if no wave had risen against the boat and no wind had blown. 

. . . Let us not, therefore, be afraid.  Instead, throwing fear aside, let us rejoice with the most joyful expectation.  What can there be to fear?  “God is with us” (Isa. 8:10).  Is that phrase not the battle cry before which demons flee and all the hosts of evil turn their backs?  “Emmanuel . . . God with us” (Matt. 1:23).  Who dares to stand against that?  Who will defy the Lion of the tribe of Judah?  They can bring their might and their spears, but if God is for us, who can be against us?  Or, if any are against us, how can they stand?  God is our own God . . . Because He is God, because He is for us, because He is our own God, we set up our banners and each of us cheerfully sings:

For yet I know I shall him praise

Who graciously to me

The health is of my countenance,

Yea, mine own God is he. 

Then there’s Timothy Keller and Katherine Leary Alsdorf ‘s book, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, in which they apply the concept of idolatry to disillusionment and lack of hope resulting from work.  

Keller and Leary Alsdorf begin by telling about how J. R. R. Tolkien wrote a short story about a man named Niggle (in “Leaf by Niggle”).  This man was disappointed at how much his toil and work in his life fell short of the masterpiece he had been working toward for some time . . . and then the man dies . . .

But really – everyone is Niggle.  Everyone imagines accomplishing things, and everyone finds him- or herself largely incapable of producing them.  Everyone wants to make a difference in life.  But that is beyond the control of any of us.  If this life is all there is, then everything will eventually burn up in the death of the sun and no one will even be around to remember anything that has ever happened.  Everyone will be forgotten, nothing we do will make any difference, and all good endeavors, even the best, will come to naught. 

Unless there is a God.  If the God of the Bible exists, and there is a True Reality beneath and behind this one, and this life is not the only life, then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling, can matter forever.  That is what the Christian faith promises . . .

Later, Keller and Leary Alsdorf state,

Genesis 3, verse 18 tells us not only that “thorns and thistles” will come out of the ground but also that “you will eat the plants of the field.”  Thorns and food.  Work will still bear some fruit, though it will always fall short of its promise.  Work will be both frustrating and fulfilling, and sometimes—just often enough—human work gives us a glimpse of the beauty and genius that might have been the routine characteristic of all our work, and what, by the grace of God, it will be again in the new heavens and new earth.  Tolkien’s dream and the resulting story, “Leaf by Niggle,” are simply a depiction of this hope.  Niggle imagined a beautiful tree that he never was able to produce in paint during his life, so he died weeping that his picture, the great work of his life, was not completed.  No one would ever see it.  And yet, when he got to the heavenly country—there was the tree!  This was Tolkien’s way of saying, to us as well as to himself, that our deepest aspirations in work will come to complete fruition in God’s future . . .

Christians have, through their hope in God’s story of redemption for the world he created, a deep consolation that enables them to work with all their being and never be ultimately discouraged by the frustrating present reality of this world, in which thorns grow up when they are trying to coax up other things.  We accept the fact that in this world our work will always fall short, just as we sinners always “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) because we know that our work in this life is not the final word. 

We call upon this consolation every Christmas, though we often do not realize what we are saying:

No more let sin and sorrows grow,

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make his blessing flow

Far as the curse is found,

Far as the curse is found,

Far as, far as the curse is found. 

Timothy Keller describes idolatry in terms of hope as what we rely on for salvation from something we do not currently like. 

. . . Because we can set up idols in our hearts (Ezekiel 14:3-7), we recognize that “making an image” of something is not necessarily a physical process but is certainly a spiritual and psychological one.  It means imagining and trusting anything to deliver the control, security, significance, satisfaction, and beauty that only the real God can give.  It means turning a good thing into an ultimate thing. 

. . . All of us look to something to assure ourselves we have spent our lives well. . . God says, “I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me.”  Notice that God says that either he will be our God or something else will.  He leaves open no in-between possibility of having no gods at all that we rely on to “save” us.” 

. . . Here Luther argues that when we fail to believe that god accepts us fully in Christ, and look to some other way to justify or prove ourselves, we commit idolatry.  Secular people may look for “favor, grace, and goodwill” in the acquisition of power, or the experience of pleasure, while religious people may trust in their moral virtue or acts of devotion or ministry.  But all are fundamentally the same inner transaction.  In each case the heart is given to a counterfeit god . . .

Idols are not only pervasive, they are powerful.  Why do the Ten Commandments begin with a prohibition of idolatry?  It is, Luther argued, because we never break the other commandments without breaking the first . . . It could be argued that everything we do wrong—every cruel action, dishonest word, broken promise, self-centered attitude—stems from a conviction deep in our souls that there is something more crucial to our happiness and meaning than the love of god.

. . . When we set our hope on an idol in this way, we are saying to ourselves, “If I had that, it would fix everything; then I’d feel my life really had value.”  Now, if anything is our “salvation” we must have it, and so we treat it as nonnegotiable.  If circumstances threaten to take it away, we are paralyzed with uncontrollable fear; if something or someone has taken it away, we burn with anger and struggle with a sense of despair. 

So, in their own way, Spurgeon and Keller / Leary Alsdorf also draw us back to Christmas. 

But let’s look at this once more, in biblical terms, with two biblical passages that summarize Christmas and two that describes one way in which God is with us and in which God is for us. 

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  – John 3:16

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

-- Isaiah 9:6-7

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. – Romans 8:28

¹ “Had it not been the Lord who was on our side,”
Let Israel now say,
² “Had it not been the Lord who was on our side
When men rose up against us,
³ Then they would have swallowed us alive,
When their anger was kindled against us;
⁴ Then the waters would have engulfed us,
The stream would have swept over our soul;
⁵ Then the raging waters would have swept over our soul.”

⁶ Blessed be the Lord,
Who has not given us to be torn by their teeth.
⁷ Our soul has escaped as a bird out of the snare of the trapper;
The snare is broken and we have escaped.
⁸ Our help is in the name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.

--Psalm 124

So when the tendrils of despair creep into our minds and soul this Christmas or whenever those feelings occur to you – they occur to each of us, if we’re honest – let us remember to do two things: first, let us evaluate where we are drawing our hope and how it relates to our lack thereof; and second, let us look to Jesus for our hope. 

One day, if we know him, all will be made well, and the struggles on this side of heaven will be made right and will be no more.  And in the mean time, God with us – Emmanuel – will indeed be with us, and will not leave us or forsake us.  He will walk with us through whatever we are facing – even through the valley of the shadow of death – and carry the weight of our souls, and will help, protect and guide us; calm our fears and provide for us.  He will “work all things together for good, for those who love God and are called according to His name.”  And one day, in His timing, whether on this side of heaven or the next, He will calm the storm around us.  And meanwhile, calm the storm inside us. 

The following three songs sum this up:

Hallelujah (Light Has Come)
Never Alone
Hope Will Lead Us On

So where is your hope? When what you had placed your hope in falls apart or fails you, where will you turn?  Have you been trusting in everything else for salvation?  Relying on yourself or what you can do?  Have you been hoping in other things to save you? 

Or have you forgotten to throw yourself on God in your circumstances and let Him give you His peace which is beyond understanding? 

I’m flawed and much less able to influence my circumstances than I would like to think.  Are you?  Look to Jesus!  “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (II Corinthians 5:21)  “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything with prayer and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:6-7)

Can we trust God in our circumstances?  He sent Jesus!  God with us. 

Do you know Him? 

References:

Spurgeon, Charles.  Finding Peace in Life’s Storms.  Whitaker House: New Kensington, Pennsylvania  1997.  pp. 53, 68-70.
Keller, Timothy; Leary Alsdorf, Katherine.  Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work.  Dutton: New York, New York, 2012.  pp. 29, 95-97, 131-135.