Going Uphill: Hope

Then the race started. The first mile: easy. The second mile the hills started to come.  The third mile felt like it was all up hill.  And as the hill came, I hoped for the finish line.  This does not mean I despise running and just cannot wait until its over; rather, I hope, I have a confident expectation that I will finish the race, whether first or last or somewhere in-between.  And so I ran with hope.       

Hope.

We cling to this word more then we realize.  A little girl hopes for the doll she has waited over three months for.  She clings to the words of her mother: “Your birthday is coming soon.”  A teenager hopes to score high on his SAT. A man might hope for a promotion at work.  A woman hopes for her boyfriend to finally muster his courage and propose to her. A young couple hopes for their family to grow. Fathers hope for their children to succeed.  Mothers hope for intimacy with their children.  Grandparents hope for grandchildren.  Employees hope for weekends. Slaves hope for freedom.

But hope often comes deepens when sufferings and trials come.  A child hopes his parents will stop arguing and be friends. A teenager hopes for the school day to end so she can hide in her room away from the bullies at school. A son sits at the bed of his mother and hopes she will live through the surgery. A man hopes for a job after the layoff so he can take care of his family. Children hope their parents will not divorce. And so on.  

Why do we so cling to hope? Perhaps we see the world as it truly is and know it is not supposed to be that way.  Perhaps there is a remnant of Eden’s goodness deep within our hearts. “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The sons and daughters of Adam and Eve still yearn for Paradise: for our workplace to be peaceful and fulfilling, for our loved ones to be healthy, for intimacy in relationships, and for a place of rest and freedom. They yearn for this fruit and every time troubles come they hope. 

We live on the other side of Paradise and know the ugliness of life: broken promises and vows, racism, human trafficking (which is slavery in its most hideous form), hate crimes, poverty, the AIDS epidemic, the hoarding of wealth, abuse in homes, shallow relationships, and the list goes on.  No wonder hope is such a powerful word.

To be sure, some people equate the word ‘hope’ with nothing more then fanciful, wishful thinking. A man spends hundreds of dollars on the lottery and ‘hopes’ to win it.  A student ‘hopes’ she will ace her test when she has not even studied for it.  A person might hope to finish first in the Boston marathon when he/she has not trained for it.  This is wishful thinking, not hope.  

Hope, however, is the deep, rich, confident expectation that God will fulfill his promises.  Sister to faith and love, hope is one of the three most enduring words of the human language (1 Corinthians 13:13).  Though its end goal cannot be seen, it deepens patience, builds a foundation for faith, and yields the tender but strong fruit of love (Romans 4:18; 5:4; Hebrews 10:23).  We nourish it through the endurance and encouragement of the Bible (Romans 15:4) and the Spirit empowers us so that we might abound in it (Romans 15:13).  Hope purifies us (1 John 3:3), emboldens us (2 Corinthians 3:12) and lifts our head to search for Christ’s return (Titus 2:13) and heaven (Colossians 1:5).

But this kind of hope is not produced or developed in a vacuum. Our tested character leads to hope and deepens its roots in us.  Paul said as much. “We know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). In the midst of suffering, perseverance is produced. On the long road of perseverance, character is formed.  But in the depths of character, hope buds, blossoms and bears fruit. It deepens in the pangs of sufferings, teaching us to learn lessons of life and lift our heads towards Heaven.

“And hope does not put us to shame,” Paul writes (Romans 5:5).  Sometimes as we wait for the fulfillment of our own personal hopes (or wishful thinking), something goes wrong and we are disappointed or humiliated.  But God’s definition of hope does not disappoint, discourage, or humiliate us. We will never be put to shame!

Why? Paul gives the answer: “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5).

Our hope is grounded in two unshakable agents: God’s love and God’s Spirit.

God’s love is the bedrock of our hope.  This is the reason why hope does not put us to shame.  Paul explains this love a few verses down: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  You and I were still going our own way instead of God’s.  We rebelled against him, disobeyed him, and incurred his judgment on ourselves. But Christ was pierced, crushed, punished and wounded for us (Isaiah 53:5).

It is through Christ’s death that we see the greatness of God’s love for us. God saw our defiant hearts but our miserable state. So he sent his Son on a search and rescue mission for us.  Jesus became one of us and took upon himself all of our sin and the punishment for it. From every white lie to lustful thought, from every thought of hate to every theft, from bowing to idols of money and television to rejecting the cries of the poor, to the very monster of sin itself—God laid all of it on Jesus and punished him for it, poured out his righteous wrath on him until he died for it. 

The results for us, if we believe in him, are truly amazing!  We no longer face condemnation (Romans 8:1), no longer have to fear God’s wrath (1 Thessalonians 1:10), and no longer are slaves of the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15). Instead, we are justified (declared righteous in his sight), have peace with God (Romans 5:1), and become his adopted children (Romans 8:15), and so much more! This was God’s demonstration of love: Christ died for us. 

 

His love was not done in a quiet corner of the world; instead, it was public!  Jesus stumbled through the crowded streets of a capital city during a high festival with a cross on his back.  Everyone in the city heard of it and knew it.  He was nailed to a cross and hung on top of a hill, the hill marked as a skull, outside the city where everyone could see (Matthew 27:33). Roman soldiers, religious leaders and leaders of society gathered to see how he would die. If there were newspaper or television reporters back then, they would have written about it. The internet would have posted it.  People would have sent texts or tweets about it.  Everyone in Jerusalem knew about Jesus’ life and death. 

 God even did extraordinary signs so that people would know that this was no ordinary death.  Darkness covered the entire land for three hours (Matthew 27:45).  And when Jesus died, God ripped the curtain in the temple in two and shook the earth so that graves and tombs split open (27:51).  The pagan centurion who guarded him understood his death was different and declared him to be the Son of God (Mark 15:39).  And God’s declaration of love resounds and rumbles through the centuries covering sin and shaking hearts awake.

And should we ever doubt his love, as we sometimes do, all we have to do is look at the cross.

His love is also our security.  “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword” (Romans 8:35)? According to Paul, these things will not separate us from the love of Christ.  But he takes it a step further. Let’s make that a leap or a light year further! He tells us that ‘we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). Through Christ and his love we conqueror in life!!

Let’s rephrase this for our modern ears, shall we? “Who or what shall separate us from the love of Christ?” Shall layoffs at work or mean employers or rude customers or debt or poverty or cancer or AIDS or angry words said to you or people picking on you or lack of food or unemployment or the calamities of the world or terrorists or you fill in the blank…the answer is NO.  Nothing has the power to separate you.  Rather, God has given you his love to become more then a conqueror over layoffs, mean employers, rude customers, debt, etc.  You are greater then the Napoleons and Caesars in this life because of him and his love.  And his love gives us the foundation of hope to believe it!

While God’s love is the bedrock of our hope, God’s Spirit is the agent and avenue for God’s love to fill and indwell us.

Even a brief glance at the Spirit’s work in Romans 8 staggers me (and hopefully you). The Spirit’s law is our life and freedom (8:2). He is the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead (!) and He lives in us (8:11)!!! By him we are able to execute the ‘misdeeds’ of the body (8:13). He is the Spirit of adoption so that we are able to call God by the intimate names of Abba or Papa or Daddy (8:15).  God is our Father and the Spirit testifies and reminds us often that we are God’s children (8:16). He helps us in our weaknesses and intercedes for us (8:26). And this is only in one chapter in the Bible!

And He is the one who pours out God’s love into our hearts.  Imagine for a moment that the Pacific Ocean represents God’s love: vast beyond our comprehension, deeper then we realize and more wild and powerful then we dare imagine.  Now imagine you are an everyday cup. Perhaps you are a cute pink one with a handle or a handsome tall green one or a coffee mug with a sunshiney smiley face on it (you’ll have to use your own imagination here—be creative). Now get this! The Spirit pours and squeezes all of the Pacific Ocean (God’s love) into you, the cup!!!

“Impossible!” you say.  And yet that is what the Spirit does with God’s love. 

If we are ever empty on love, it is not on account of the Spirit! He pours God’s love into us.  And so we have hope. Rich. Deep. Genuine. Real hope. 

And so I live with hope.  Do you?

Oh…and by the way, I finished the race and placed something like 128 or 138 out of 300-400 people or something like that—not too bad for running only the day before.  Plus I beat my sister by a few seconds…but I won’t brag...well, not too much.