In an Instant

"In an instant, 

beyond all human expectation, 

famine can be turned to feasting. 

Don’t give up. Keep praying. 

2 Kings 7"

~ John Piper

Beyond Its Reach

"Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. 

The beauty of it smote his heart, 

as he looked up out of the forsaken land, 

& hope returned to him. 

For like a shaft, clear and cold, 

the thought pierced him 

that in the end 

the Shadow was only 

a small and passing thing: 

there was light 

and high beauty 

for ever beyond its reach."

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Not A Hopegoat

There's this idea in some stories.  It's in The Giver, that there will be one member of their society whose job it is to hold memories.  The Last Sin Eater dramatizes the idea of the scapegoat found in the Mosaic Covenant: the guilt of the people is placed on a victim - in the Bible it is a goat who bears their iniquities into exile as a method of atonement.  In both cases the idea is that the people are relieved of something, and this needful thing is accomplished by a segment of the group.

I worry* sometimes that my friends will think that hoping is just my thing.  (Hope is my thing; I'm rather passionate about it.  Only, it isn't patented.)  They might think that I can be the hopeful person, just like one of us is nerdy and one of us is silly and one of us is quiet.  They can let me hope for them, but they're going to stay cynical.  I might have a crazy hopeful perspective, and they'll tolerate me; they just aren't going to join me.

But it seems like God has led me not just to hope, but to share what I have learned, to teach and encourage other people to hope.  I rejoice when others dare to hope.

I don't believe hope is optional.  What we hope for varies, but hoping is part of faith and part of loving.



*This is only a worry.  I don't have any evidence that my friends actually think this, thank God!

Hope in a Real God

"Isn't that an awesome story?" my friend asked, but he continued, "I don't tell it too much, because I don't want to give people hope."

"I feel that way sometimes, but I usually overcome the temptation and help people to hope anyway," I answered.

"I don't want to give people false hope."

"No.  But I think it is good to testify of what God is really like.  And God really did that.  So, even if He isn't going to do the same thing for us, we are at least hoping in the kind of God who does - and He's a God we can trust with the decision not to rescue us."

" 'Even if He does not...' like Daniel's friends said."

To Get Hungry

God made us to get hungry.

C.S. Lewis famously pointed out that "A man’s physical hunger does not prove that man will get any bread; he may die of starvation on a raft in the Atlantic. But surely a man’s hunger does prove that he comes of a race which repairs its body by eating and inhabits a world where eatable substances exist."

God made hunger because there was food, and thirst because there was drink, and longing for Him because there is life.

But I think God could have made us to just eat regularly enough that we never feel hunger.  It seems like He didn't.  On purpose.  And more profoundly, He didn't make the world so that peace and justice and kindness persist without interruption.  He allows us to notice our need.

Then we cry out for Him.  Then we hope for the good thing we lack.  Then we wait.

He made the hunger because there is a satisfaction - and because the hunger points us to our dependence on Him.  I think God wants us to know Him as the giver of good gifts, the provider of our needs.

Is Love the Reason?

"We're all homesick 

Is love the reason?

My hunger led me to your hope

Until the end of this colder season

Keep us warm."

~ Alli Rogers, Eden

Track Record

Praise God!

Time Limit

I think sometimes that people are brave to hope.  Because hope is hard, and hope is foolish: probably the only thing worse is not hoping for the good thing you want or need.

But sometimes we are not being brave.  We are trying to be controlling, trying to get credit (even to ourselves) for doing the right thing, the sacrificial thing.  I think to myself, "Six months is all I can handle," or "If it's been a year, and nothing has changed, it never will..." They're lies.  As if things never happen slowly.  As if God doesn't wait His purposes for His due time.  As if God can't sustain me another six months or another year for as many of those as He wills.

Then God reminds me that I am not lord of my own times; my days are in His hands, and I don't get to decide how long before I give up on Him working.  He can release me from a hope.  He can change my heart.  But I cannot determine that I have done my time.  Love hopes all things, and love doesn't quit.

That This Thirst Will Not Last Long

"How the Lord takes by its corners this old world 

And shakes us forward and shakes us free 

To run wild with the hope 

To run wild with the hope

"The hope that this thirst will not last long 

That it will soon drown in the song 

Not sung in vain 

And I feel thunder in the sky 

I see the sky about to rain 

And I hear the prairies calling out Your name."

~ Calling Out Your Name 

by Rich Mullins

Hoping When There Are "If's"

A friend asked me this week, "How do we hope in God when we don't have a specific promise for our circumstance?"  We both know that there are specific promises in which we can hope, but that isn't all that hope should be.

One thing that I have clung to is this: If my desire is from God, He will accomplish it (so I can rest in that), and if it isn't from Him, ultimately I don't really want it (so I can surrender that).

Somehow this isn't resignation, but surrender.  The difference might be that resignation would expect the undesired end; but surrender to God expects a good end, and hasn't given up on the possibility that God will mightily work where things seem humanly impossible.