Hope
In Hard Times
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. [2] Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
[3] The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. [4] Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: [5] And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.
Isaiah
40:1-5
Hands that touch but do not
feel
Eyes
that see but do not sparkle
Hearts
that beat but do not love
Functional organs. Lives
that are existing but not living. They are the result of pain - sensitivity
which has been quenched through too much damage.
Perhaps it was a spouse.
Perhaps it was an abusive parent. Perhaps it is self loathing. Whatever the
reason, you just don’t feel like you can risk exposing yourself again.
You pull back. You don’t
risk. You close up, tune out, turn off, and disengage.
Does God have a remedy?
Viktor Frankl, the Austrian
psychologist and concentration camp survivor, documented the fact that those
prisoners who believed in tomorrow best survived the horrors of today.
Survivors of POW camps in
Vietnam reported that a compelling hope for the future was the primary force
that kept many of them alive.
A mouse dropped in water
will give up and drown in minutes. But if it is rescued, it will tread water for
more than 20 hours the next time.
Pastor Gerald Mann saw his
church grow from 60 to 4,000 in 14 years. His explanation: "I know three
things people want when they come to church: they want help, they want home, and
they want hope."
Where do you have hope? It's
not a rhetorical question. What causes you to feel that your life has a future,
a purpose, a reason to be? Do you have such a reason for hope? If you do, is it
the right reason?
Avoid the dead ends of
false hope
Listen to this paragraph:
"Most
people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know
that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world.
There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but
they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we
first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up
some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no
learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily
called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of
the best possible ones. There was something we grasped at, in that first moment
of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I
mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been
excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded
us……" (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 119).
We know there's
"something more" which has evaded us. What do we do about it?
Some of us live for
tomorrow. We hope that the next
job, the next girlfriend or boyfriend or spouse, or car or clothes or city will
fill what is lacking. We put our hope in tomorrow, believing that it will
somehow be better than today. But it never is.
So some of us settle for
today. We give up our dreams of a
better future, and settle into the present as we find it. We call ourselves
"realists." We decide that there is no such thing as real love, or
purpose, or meaning in life. We'll settle for what we can get with what we have.
And some of us escape the
present. Medieval monastics retreated from the physical to concentrate on
the spiritual. Simon Stylites lived nearly 40 years on the top of a pillar, 60
feet above the ground, refusing to come down. His example was widely applauded.
Others escape the present in
less spiritual ways. Drug or alcohol abuse, sexual addictions and flings,
fixation on cults or the occult -- anything to lessen the pain, the grief, the
disappointment of hope abandoned.
In Victor Hugo's Les
Miserables, Fantine is a young single mother without a job, a place to stay,
or a way to support her child. If you've seen the musical, you'll remember her
haunting song, titled "I Dreamed a Dream:"
I
had a dream in time gone by
When
hope was high
And
life worth living
I
dreamed that love would never die
I
dreamed that God would be forgiving.
But her love has died, and
she believes that her God is not forgiving. And so she ends,
I
had a dream my life would be
So
different from this hell I'm living
So
different now from what it seemed
Now
life has killed the dream I dreamed.
The Other Option
But there is a fourth
option. It is "true hope" found in the person of Jesus Christ.
1
Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2 Speak ye comfortably to
Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity
is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins. 3
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the LORD,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be
exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be
made straight, and the rough places plain: 5 And the glory of the LORD shall be
revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath
spoken it.
"Comfort" means to
give hope and courage in the midst of despair. He repeats it twice for emphasis.
Comfort "my people," God's children from every nation, kindred and
tongue. "Saith your God," not a man but the King of the Kingdom.
Why? Because "her
warfare is completed."
How? "A voice of one
calling: 'In the desert prepare the way for the Lord" (v. 3).
The one calling is the
messenger sent to precede the king. In the ancient world, the visit of the
Sovereign would require that all roads be improved, valleys filled in, mountains
leveled, terrain cleared. "The red carpet" was rolled out. Then
"the glory of the Lord" would be revealed.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all
found this promise fulfilled when John the Baptizer announced the beginning of
the public work of Jesus of Nazareth. And John even quoted the Baptist: "I
am the voice of one calling in the desert, 'Make straight the way for the Lord'"
(John 1:23).
"Advent" is from
the Latin for "to come." At Jesus' first "advent," he kept
God's promise. His suffering death completed our warfare and paid for our sin.
All past tense. He brought us hope that our past would be forgotten and our
future secured, that our lives could have meaning and joy again.
He brought us hope that our
valleys of despair and discouragement will be raised up and leveled, that our
mountains and hills of problems and pain will be made low, that our rough ground
of hopelessness and loneliness will become level.
Because his name is
Immanuel, "God with us," there is hope in our hardest times, because
there God is with us. He hurts with us, cries with us, comforts us, guides us,
brings us through. In his will and word and worship, in his presence through
prayer, in his Spirit's power and encouragement, we find hope.
Live for God's glory on
earth, and you will have all the help of heaven. Choose to meet the needs you
find in God's name and love, and you will have more opportunities than you can
imagine. Turn your vocation, school, neighborhood, and family into your mission
field where you will help people follow Jesus, and you will have more joy and
satisfaction than earth can offer. Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness,
and everything will be added to you (Matthew 6:33). This is the promise of God.
Finally, don't search for
hope where it does not live. It is not in your next job or next purchase or next
relationship. Don't give up on hope for today, or seek to escape the present.
Find your hope in the fact that Jesus never left the race He entered. His Spirit
lives in you today.
Pastor
John