Things Hoped For

Things Hoped For

I took part in a memorial today for a friend that I greatly appreciated. We shared a characteristic seldom seen, a belief in hope: the greater the challenge, the deeper the pain, the more reason to give birth to things hoped for. In the face of disappointment or in the days of suffering, faith is grown not abandoned. The Buddha said, “life is suffering” and in some ways he was right but that is not reason to give up on faith. It is a reason for it. I have seen in the face of pain rare souls that by grace trended toward hope not away from it. Truly the wide road leads many to turn to despair, anger, disappointment so many are on it, but the narrow gate shines with ludicrous hope.

We are all faced with this life's suffering and pain. No one,especially Jesus, was exempt. In times of uncertainty and confusion, the wide road leads people to side with the philosopher who said, “if there is a god, he must be the devil.” Pain is often seen as grounds for an accusation against God. Convinced things could be better, they hold a trial not just of deity- but of hope itself. When finished deconstructing God, (for reasons of their own disappointment, they conclude that God is not there or worse still that he does not care or is evil),the angry skeptic is left without hope. If the suffering of this world is all there is? If God should be on trial for evil, for sickness or for death? If for having not stopped the suffering or for not having answered us in our requests? If it is for these reasons we abandon hope in God, hope in the Kingdom not yet come then we are left with a void, we are “of all men most miserable.”Knowing in our heart what could be, bound by the curse mortality.

But we are not without hope. It is the knowing in our hearts the foretaste of what could be, of what will be, that is the mark of hope. The sign of eternity is that there is a vision of “a kingdom hoped for, yet not seen.” As the teacher of Ecclesiastes says, “God has put eternity in the hearts of man.” We know deep down it was not supposed to be this way. We were created for a kingdom of light... we must be sojourning in a kingdom of darkness. In our pain we are not subject to despair rather we are growing in the evidence of hope.

In Hebrews there is a list of our fellow travelers, people who looked for something better, something not found. “All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. Obviously people who say such things are looking forward to a country they can call their own. If they had longed for the country they came from, they could have gone back. But they were looking for a better place, a heavenly homeland. That is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” Hebrews 11:13-16

I prayed with my friend that the Kingdom of God would break into the now and healing would happen. And while we waited we did not give up hope. The Kingdom of God is real, it is just now and not yet, it is here in us but it is also still hoped for.

Some think faith in God is a weakness, for people who need a crutch. They forget that when we tell stories of heroes there is no honor in surrender, no strength in the solider who lays down and stops fighting. What hero ever said in their heart “this is all there is, there is no hope.” The hero is the one who in the face of great pain, temporary defeat and personal suffering holds out hope, rallies the soul, holds on to dreams, grows in character, never giving up Hope! “maybe not today... but one day the sun is going to shine, the kingdom is going to come, the nations of this world will become the kingdom of the Lamb!” One day,

“What we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.) Romans 8:18-24

Suffering and pain is not reason for defeat, not a time to call into the question the mission of the kingdom. It is a calling to hope, hope that this is still not the Kingdom, there is only a foretaste a mere shadow of what will come. So we keep looking, keep praying, keep believing we keep hoping for city whose builder and maker is God. And because of pain we say with the Spirit and the bride.....your Kingdom come! Let the poor be glad, the sick be healed, the blind see, the captives set free these are things worth have hope for. I was with my friend when she died and it never gave me thought to give up hope, it gave me one more reason to hold on to it.