Through

"The ten spies looked at God

through the difficulties,

while Joshua and Caleb

looked at the difficulties through what they knew about God."

~ Warren Wiersbe

"Ever the Hope of Men"

“Aragorn looked at the pale stars, and at the moon, now sloping behind the western hills that enclosed the valley. 'This is a night as long as years,' he said. 'How long will the day tarry?'

'Dawn is not far off,' said Gamling, who had now climbed up beside him. 'But dawn will not help us, I fear.'

'Yet dawn is ever the hope of men,' said Aragorn.”

~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

Like A Star

"Hope itself is like a star—

not to be seen in the sunshine of prosperity, 

and only to be discovered in the night of adversity." 

~ C.H. Spurgeon

God Waits

While I've waited, I’ve noticed something I believe is significant: God waits.

He's able to do things instantly. But He doesn't always. And whatever we believe about His outside-of-timeness, I also believe that He is here in time also, with us in our days. 

Not only that, but Jesus walked this time-bound earth, and didn't speed up the minutes of the long nights, or the months of his childhood waiting to start his public ministry. He didn't even speed up the seconds of labored dying.

So there is something sacred about waiting. In it, we participate in something so important, and so precious, that God Himself does it.

Waiting by Kevin Henkes

Kevin Henkes wrote and illustrated "Waiting".  I highly recommend it: As a story.  As a lesson.  As a tribute.  As a comfort.  I've never found anything that so succinctly and so emotionally touched on the experience of waiting - especially shared waiting.

Unraveling

One of my friends says she likes the stories that, after deep darkness, are content to end with a glimmer of hope and a hint of redemption.  They dare us to hope when our circumstances are yet unresolved.  We look for such glimmers in our own lives, and anticipate the end of the story.  

Another friend doesn't find stories very hopeful unless they are eschatological - that is, unless they involve the end of the world and the setting of all things right.  For him, a story about a long-wait at last fulfilled, or a weary quest accomplished is insufficiently hopeful.  If there was a loss unanswered, a wickedness unjudged, the story is incomplete.  

I think the stories I like best are somewhere in between.  Stories with only a tiny bit of hope at the end are not enough to balance the meditation on suffering that comes before.  Stories all about the end leave me feeling less hopeful about the in-between hopes of my little life.  

But my brother says that we have to know about the grand finale of hope in order for the hopes along-the-way to be purposeful enough and strong enough to withstand unraveling.  If in the end Jesus isn't going to bring justice, defeat every last bad guy, and wipe away all the tears - then the good culminations of our wishes these days are all just cruel deceptions on the road of the long defeat.  

When we keep in mind the ultimate hope, the guaranteed victory of Jesus, all the other good things that we have trusted God for: our personal salvation - even the incarnation - are pointing us to the fullness of hope.  

Beginning and Breaking

Do you remember the end of Batman Begins, where his father's legacy, a strong-standing mansion, had just burned down around him because he chose to stand for hope and redemption instead of razing a rotting city and the people rotting it? Where Bruce Wayne and his faithful butler decide to rebuild, not exactly as before, but to improve the property - to line it up with the destiny that was theirs, but they never knew before? 

Don't you think it is true, that sometimes weak things ought to be broken, so they can be rebuilt stronger, and more to the purpose? And isn't it scary, knowing that you are breaking something that already is, something that is sort of functional - that you may not actually see the fulfillment of your vision for the new thing; it might not ever be accomplished even? The people of Gotham may choose anarchy, despair, deception anyway? But what if they don't?