Have Hope!

In a radio broadcast on Christmas Day, 1939, with darkening war clouds looming large over Europe and England, King George VI quoted what was then an unknown poet’s words: “And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’ So I went forth and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.” (Minnie Louise Haskins)

American radio-show host Michael Medved spoke of the current culture as having a plague of pessimism, infecting millions of Americans. A survey of revealed that the word that least described “Generation X” was not “lucky” but “angry” and “stressed out.” Kurt Cobain, lead singer of the hard rock band, Nirvana, killed himself at the height of his career in 1994, dying at his own hands with all the wealth and fame a young person might have dreamed of. That generation (mid-60’s to late 70’s) was not alone in its pessimism. The current Alpha Generation (2010-2024) of tech-savvy, screen-glued young people has little more hope than their predecessors, called by various names. The cynicism of previous generations has been passed on from generation to generation, so that the outlook today is no rosier than it was when Gen X dealt with its peculiar darkness. It has always been so to a world estranged from God. “If in this life only we have hope…,” Paul muses. Yet some do not have hope in this life only—just despair, deep darkness and thoughts of death as a desired alternative.

But, there is hope! In the direst of circumstances, Jeremiah recalled God’s mercies and affirmed that “therefore have I hope…because his compassions fail not.” (Lam. 3:21,22).

We can rejoice in that we are saved by hope: “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope.” (Rom. 8:24)

We are secured by hope. “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast.” (Hebs. 6:18,19)

We serve by hope. “Who (Abraham) against hope believed in hope, that he might become the father of many nations.” (Rom. 4:18)

We suffer in hope. “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us.” (Rom. 5:3-5)

We stand in hope. “Looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ.” (Titus 2:13)

So, for the believer, life begins and ends in hope! It is what caused an old-time evangelist to once say: “When I was 14 years old, I knelt by my dying mother’s bed. She smiled at me through the death shadow on her face and said she was going Home, and she asked me to meet her in Heaven. I gave her my promise. Her body sleeps in a lonely cemetery in the state of Alabama. As I have sat by her grave and listened to a funeral dirge played by the wind in the pine trees nearby, I have said, ‘Mother, I will see you again someday.’ Some people say I am dreaming. If I am, don’t wake me. If this world were all, I would want my Christian faith. My faith hangs a rainbow of hope over the dust of my dead, and kindles a smile on the brow of bereavement. This world is not all. There is a God. There is a heaven. There is a hell. I am playing a safe game. If there were only one world I have already won. Since there is an after-life, I win for two worlds. You don’t have to take any chances with your soul.” (Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.)

Dennis Fisher, writing in Our Daily Bread, tells of an 18^th-century French general finance controller, Etienne de Silhouette, who during wartime tried to increase revenues by raising taxes heavily on the wealthy. His victims complained and used the word silhouette to refer to their wealth having been reduced to a mere shadow of what it had been. Fisher makes the analogy between that and what Jeremiah the prophet felt as he lamented over the city of Jerusalem, which had been reduced to less than a shadow of what it had been in its greatness. But, in Lamentations 3, the weeping prophet embraces hope over despair when he affirms that because of God’s faithfulness and never-failing mercies, he did have hope!

Whatever your present miseries or anticipated future difficulties, there is always hope. George H.W. Bush, when he was vice-president, attended the funeral in Moscow’s Kremlin for the deceased Russian premier, Leonid Brezhnev. He noted that when the widow approached the open casket for a final farewell to her husband, she made over his body the sign of the cross, something that in a country where atheism was the official religion was a stunning move. It was as if the wife were saying, “There has got to be some hope. Even if atheism is the state religion, I am going to pin my hopes upon the message of the crucified one.”

Yes, there is always hope. After Paul said that if in this life only we have hope, we are of all men most miserable, he immediately exclaimed: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” (I Cor.15:19)

Hope. Don’t leave home without it!

“In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began.” (Titus 1:2)