Hold On Hope--August 23, 2021

Hold On Hope--August 23, 2021

"Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful." [Hebrews 10:23]

There's a lyric stuck in my head as I write these words, a recurring refrain from a 90s pop ballad by the band Guided By Voices.  It goes simply, "Everybody's gotta hold on hope, it's the last thing that's holding me." There's something to that refrain, as circular as it sounds: you hold onto hope, and discover that it's hope that is holding you.

I think that's something like the way Christian hope works--we hold onto hope, because the One on whom we pin our hopes is holding onto us.  We keep the faith, to borrow a phrase, because the One in whom we place our trust is faithful--that is to say, reliable, dependable, and constant. And it's because our hope is in that particular God that we keep holding on.  

Hope--all hope--has an object, like an arrow has a trajectory it is moving toward.  And it is that forward motion that makes hope different from wishful thinking. Just having a groundless want for things to get better will set you up for disappointment time and time again. Merely having, a la Fraulein Maria in The Sound of Music, "confidence in confidence alone" won't do the trick, any more than wishing for a sunny day tomorrow will make it so.  Christian hope isn't about forcing ourselves to see the sunny side of things or telling ourselves that every glass is half-full.  It isn't about somehow willing good things to happen by the power of positive thinking, either.  Like the old line of Lesslie Newbigin says, "I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist:  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!"

That's just it: our hope isn't grounded in circumstances going our way or external events happening as we would have wished, but rather in a person who is constant.  It's because Jesus is faithful that I can keep holding onto Jesus, even when my hands are getting tired and slippery from sweat.  We hold onto hope in him, because we discover at the very same time that Jesus--in whom we have placed our hope and our trust--is holding onto us.

So what practical difference does a Jesus-rooted hope make in our lives?  Let me suggest a couple of ways.  For one, on the days when it feels like our best efforts aren't making a difference, or when the world's troubles are just too much in the face of our tiny efforts, a hope that is tethered to seeing outcomes change is going to be overwhelmed like a lifeboat in a tsunami. When we look at how daunting it is to take care of the world in which we live, when it seems like our individual efforts are tiny and negligible, it can feel like it's no use trying to limit how much energy you use or choose where it comes from, or like there's no way to stop the rise of ocean levels or the growing intensity of storms--so it's worthless even to try.  But if my hope is grounded in Jesus (who is faithful!), then I will be able to keep doing the things I know to do in order to be a good steward of the world around me, and to trust that those things are not in vain--that they are somehow gathered up in God's work to heal and restore and mend creation.  

Or if I watch the news and feel overcome at the tragedy of seeing so many desperate people in Afghanistan trying to flee an oppressive new government, or the amoral domination of warlords, or the chaos left in the power vacuum there, I can just feel like it's pointless to try anything, because it's all too complicated and above my pay-grade to meddle with problems bigger than I can understand.  But a Jesus-rooted hope can simply say, "How will I act in ways that align with the Jesus in whom I place my hope?"  And then, regardless of how daunting the Big Picture problem is, I can do what is within my ability to work on--whether helping to settle refugees in my area locally, writing and lobbying my representatives to help evacuate those seeking refuge, or donating money to relief and rescue operations I know I can trust.

In every situation, there's an important difference in rooting our hope in Jesus, compared with basing our hope on whether things seem to be going our way at the moment.  And what we are given in Jesus is a hope who will not let us down.  He takes our efforts, even when they seem like tiny sparks, barely visible against the vast gloom around, and he gathers them into his work to make all things new.  And because we know Jesus won't give up on this whole hurting world, we can find the courage to keep holding on to him, and adding our efforts to what he is up to in the world.  

When the need of the world or the troubles in our lives seem so big they threaten to swallow us all up, the writer of Hebrews sounds an awful lot like a 90s pop song:  we hold onto Hope himself, knowing that he's the One who is holding onto us.

And he is enough.

Lord Jesus, be your faithful self for us, and make our efforts for good to be a part of your work to make all things new.