The other day I listened to a CD I haven’t listened to in quite a while, a Steven Curtis Chapman.  I was enjoying singing along, and then it hit.  That song.  I’d forgotten it was on this album.  It’s a song written after the death of his 5 yo daughter.  I cry every time I hear it – which is not always a good thing when one is driving in Seattle traffic!  The song is honest in its expression of bewilderment.  It doesn’t attempt to dodge the questions.  It doesn’t attempt to read the mind of God and put explanations in His mouth.  But what the chorus does is hold up a startlingly clear declaration of what should be every Christian’s theme:  “But we can cry with hope.  We can say goodbye with hope, ’cause we know that goodbye is not the end.  And we can grieve with hope, because we believe in hope.  There’s a place where we’ll see your face again.”

With hope.  Paul tells us in I Thessalonians 4:13 that we should not grieve like “the rest of men, who have no hope.”  What if this isn’t talking just about grieving for death?  What if we applied this thought to the rest of our lives?  What would it be to walk in hope?

Hope is founded on an absolute certainty of God’s goodness.  When it comes down to it, either we believe He is good, or we don’t.  All worrying is a statement of doubt in either God’s love, His goodness or in His ability to carry out His will.   All of Scripture is one long expression of His love, though Romans 8: 31-39, Paul’s famous elaboration on the subject, is a favorite ‘mini-treatise’.  As one of my favorite hymns puts it “Could we with ink the ocean fill, and were the skies of parchment made, were every stone on earth a quill and every man a scribe by trade – to write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry, nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky!”   To walk in hope here, then, is to be convinced that He loved me yesterday, He loves me today, and He will love me tomorrow.  Nothing that can happen, nothing I can do, nothing anyone else can do, can change that.  And HE cannot change, either!

Romans 8:28 says  “For in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him, those who are called according to His purpose.”  And what is that purpose?  Paul tells us in v. 29:  “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.”  Our ultimate good – the good that God is working for through every situation in life that comes our way – is that we become more and more like Christ.  No matter our situation, then, no matter our circumstances, we can walk in hope that that good is being accomplished.  No matter what man’s intentions may be, no matter the apparent origin of our circumstances, we can have absolute trust in God’s intentions for us in them.

And as for His ability to carry out His will…  Remember the Lord’s question to Abraham, after Sara laughed at the idea of having a baby?  “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”  With God all things – ALL things – are possible.  The universe was created by His Word.  The barren have given birth.  The lame have walked, the blind have seen, the dead have risen, the Good News has been preached to the poor.   He has fed the thousands and calmed storms.  He orchestrates the heavens, calls the stars by name, orders the seasons.  He calls forth wind and rain, sunshine and frost.  He sustains all of life, from the simplest amoeba to the most complex of his creations, man.  The Savior has died and resurrected and ascended, conquering death and Hell and the power of sin FOREVER.  We can walk in hope that He is able – no matter what, no matter how, no matter where, no matter who.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminded His listeners that every thing we need, God already knows.  He hasn’t somehow “overlooked” something, or forgotten to take some situation into consideration.  There isn’t some complication that He didn’t see coming.  Everything we need that will accomplish His will, the purpose for which He called us, WILL be provided.  Period.   If we say we have an “unmet need”, we are calling God a liar.  Jesus said we are to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.  Why?  Because that way is to walk in hope.  That way is to care more about God’s purpose for our lives being accomplished than about whether our situation is what we think it should be or not.  The more we understand of God’s kingdom – His rule, His sovereignty, His power – and the more we submit to His conforming process for ourselves – emptying ourselves of our own will so that all may be HIS – only then will we be able to place a proper perspective on  the “all these things” which will be added.   Christians aren’t promised that they will always have everything they will need to maintain temporal life; millions have died of want, of sickness, and of persecution.  We are promised, however, everything that we need to maintain Life.  That is our hope.

In the book “Jesus Calling” I found the statement “Anxiety is the result of envisioning a future without God.”  Too often, we fret about what “may” come to pass, about the “what ifs”, just like the world does, grieving as those who have no hope.  We need to walk in hope, and encourage one another in hope.  Hope isn’t an “everything will be ok” platitude that wallpapers over a crumbling wall.   It’s not a “blab it and grab it” assertion to try to force God to perform what we believe He should do.  No, hope looks every ugly possibility square in the face and yet sees in it the face of God, trusting to His everlasting love for us, His all-encompassing intent for our good, and His unlimited power.  Hope means that we can express the honest feelings of grief or pain or bewilderment because we know the certainty of our hope is greater than those feelings.  We can ask the hard questions that our circumstances may give rise to, because our hope does not rest in our understanding of the “whys” of God, but in God Himself.

So, whatever we do, let us not do it as the world does.  Let us grieve with hope, cry with hope, suffer with hope, endure with hope, face the future with hope, no matter what things look like from our earthly eyes.

In a world with no hope, let hope be our hallmark!