The Other Side of Hope

There's a Proverb that says, ". . . hope deferred makes the heart sick."  Thinking about this makes me wonder whether or not hope is placed in the right things.  People say, the best way not to get your expectations violated is to set low expectations or to enter a situation with no expectations.  Some say, this allows you focus on what you can control and that if you have confidence in yourself, you will be able to handle whatever the situation throws at you.  Buddhism tries to deny emotion so you don't experience heartache.  Others, idealists, continue to hope but may never see their vision come to reality.  Was it worth the try?  At what point do we give up and cut our losses?  A friend encouraged me to grieve, saying it what important to process loss prior to moving to something else.  I've been told this also also is advised by divorce counselors and I've read that processing mistakes is key to bouncing back and learning from failure.  Others - Teddy Roosevelt for example - talked about living life to the fullest (my paraphrase) so there are no regrets, and to make the most out of life.  Ecclesiastes states that there is nothing better for a man (for a person) to tell themselves that their work is good and to enjoy the fruit of their labor.  Elsewhere, the Bible states that without vision the people perish and one of the tactics utilized by POW camps was to strip people of their sense of self, of their sense of dignity, possibly of their sense of right and wrong, and of their hope.  According to others, people without something to look forward to and people without something to fight for slowly waste away.  The goal of Utopia is to create controlled equality as a hope, but history has shown time and again, that that does not work.

So is there value to hope, or are all the above just ways to cope with the difficulties of hope deferred?  And is there a hope we can bank on that will not disappoint?

Some thoughts:

1. Hope in small things helps us persevere, even if we are wrong and it never happens - and that does not mean it's necessarily easy.  The Tom Hanks character in "Castaway" held onto the hope that he could reunite with the love of his life and to the thought of delivering packages that had washed up on shore . . . and he gave up a couple times.  
2. To have hope is to be human.  It adds vitality.  
3. Others can influence whether we maintain our hope, but it is better maintained internally, regardless. 
4. The love of those most important to you is powerful.  
5. Eventually we all let each other down -- a lot -- and it is not possible to make it through life without being hurt by something or someone.  Eventually, material things we place our hope in also let us down.  We all die.  We all get sick.  The Law of Entropy is a reality.  Some respond to this with fatalism and narcissism: how much can I get out of this life and we only live once, so . . .  This can also turn into a pursuit of riches and comfort.  
6. John Ortberg, in All the Places to Go: How Will You Know?  Turns this on its head.    

When people approached Louie [Zamperini], he would often pray for them on the spot.  "Anybody can pray for somebody," he said.  His life was energized because he didn't regard it as his life; every moment was an opportunity to connect with someone, to learn from someone, to make someone smile . . ."

In the Bible, there is a world of difference between faith in a supernatural God on the one hand and trying to use magic or superstition on the other.  The problem with superstition is not just that it's ignorant.  It's an attempt to use some power or force without placing oneself in obedience to a Being who is concerned with justice and love . . .   

When I try to use God the way someone uses a Ouija board or a Magic 8 Ball or a horoscope, I violate the nature of the divine-human relationship.  I make me the master and God my genie in a bottle.  I make getting the right outcome my idol. And I move away from the spiritual growth that is God's deepest desire for me; God's primary will for me is the person I become and not the circumstances I inhabit . . .  

. . . Both science and magic offer power we use to remold our outer world to our satisfaction.  Faith tells us that what most needs to be transformed is not our outer world, but our inner selves.  Faith is not about me getting what I want in my outer world; it's about God getting what he wants in my inner world . . . 

Trouble avoidance is tempting but not ennobling.  Spiritual maturity is being able to face troubles without being troubled.  At the end of our lives, it's the troubles we faced for the sake of a greater cause that will have the greatest meaning.  

You might often hear the phrase, that "you deserve to be happy."  What if that is not the case?  With that mindset, anything that does not make you happy is taking from what's yours and is a kind of enemy.  The Bible commands to "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.  And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." (James 1:2-4, NASB)

On the surface, that seems backwards, but in light of what Ortberg described, it makes sense.

So what makes sense in regards to hope?  Maybe trying to fail-safe hope, as described at the beginning, makes sense.  But if we do that, perhaps, we should place our hope on something solid.

The Bible says that God is the same, yesterday, today and forever.  Some say God does not exist.  What if He does?  If God does exist, and our expectations for God could be founded on His consistency, would placing our hope in that consistency be worthwhile?  It would depend on who God is?  If God is the loving Father, if God is both just and loving, if God does keep His promises, if God's lovingkindness and mercy are new every morning, if God is faithful even when we are not, if God is slow to anger and abundant in mercy, if God exercises true justice either now or in the next life, if my life counts for something on this earth - no matter what happens - because God loves me and because Jesus died for me, then yes!, placing my hope in God's consistency would be worthwhile.

Does that mean I will always understand His decisions?  Does that mean He owes me anything?  The Bible states to owe nothing to anyone except to love one another?  Can I expect His love?  Yes.  Can I expect His justice?  Also.  Can I expect Him to get angry at things that go against His holiness?  Yes.  Can I expect Him to show mercy in light of repentance?  Yes.  Would He be just otherwise?

All this is well and good in the immediate and in light of the future, but what about in light of eternity?  Ortberg writes, "The only way to fix a broken story is to embed it in a larger story that begins and ends well."  Reality is, we are all a broken story.  None of us experiences life the way we dreamed as a kid.  Ecclesiastes 12 is right to describe growing old as difficult.  We all have scars we carry with us that impact our relational effectiveness.  We all have hot buttons.  We all have pain.  We all cause pain to others.  We all suffer due to the consequences of the actions of others and we have all suffered due to the consequences of the actions we have committed (we reap what we sow).

The Bible frames this in the context of sin: "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."  In other words, we are all separated from God because of our sin. But God loves us so much that even though He owed us nothing and we owed Him our lives due to sin, Jesus died for us.  Check out the following sequence of verses.  "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."  "He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."

The Bible takes hope a step further in the phrase, "the hope of glory."  This is referring to Heaven.  Heaven implies eternal life, but the Bible also describes it as life without pain, life without sin, life in the presence of God as we were meant to be - without all the things on this side of life that trip us up and make life difficult.  That is really what we all long for deep down - what we all try to resolve when we feel compelled to minimize the risk of hope deferred.

The Bible places two conditions on this type of hope: 1) that Jesus rose from the dead - without that, the concept of eternal life would be a farce; and 2) accepting what Jesus did on the cross in our place, alone, as enough to save us - to accept God's justice for our sins and God's mercy in providing someone to sacrifice for us in our place, to believe Jesus is God and that He rose from the dead, and to make Him Lord of our lives.  In doing so, God promises to give us Jesus' righteousness in exchange for our sin.

It's that simple and it's that profound . . . and it means placing our hope in something we cannot control - but in the only thing as solid as a rock (in addition to placing our hope in God's nature).  In this case, it's hope deferred until heaven.  But on this side of eternity, we can have the steadfast hope that God will be true to who He says He is, that He will demonstrate that in our lives, and that He will not fail us.

All of us start with a clean slate and then we murk it up.  With Heaven, we can place our broken stories into a larger story that ends well.

Hope.