In the 8th Chapter of Job, one of Job’s friends sums up what he thinks is going wrong with the world. He says “Those who forget God have no hope …” (Job 8)
What happens when a society forgets God? Wealth is idolized, truth is minimized, life is trivialized, races are polarized, wrong is rationalized. No wonder people lose hope in such a society.
I strongly believe that the further you get from God, the less hope you have; for yourself, for your future and for those you love. Conversely, the closer you get to him, the more hopeful you become.
Even psychologists seem to acknowledge this fact. ‘Psychology Today’ lists five ways to find hope.
- Find a clear path
- Look for role models who have solutions
- Do what you know you can
- Perform acts of kindness and
- Turn to your faith.
I think the key to hope is to invest your hope in the proper things. Investing in things which are imperfect, vulnerable and temporary will always lead to the dashing of hope. I’m sorry to say that most of the things that we rely on fall into these categories. Our jobs, our families, our health, and even other people. These are not safe or sensible places to invest our ultimate hope. We can also rule out politics, economics, science and education. These things all potentially good, but none of them seem to have fixed our world yet- and it’s probably unreasonable to expect them to. If you don’t believe me, just switch on the news for five minutes. How’s it looking?
It’s probably why Psalm 146 advises …
Don’t put your confidence in powerful people;
there is no help for you there.
When they breathe their last, they return to the earth,
and all their plans die with them.
But joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper,
whose hope is in the Lord their God.
Your hope is too precious to invest in fragile and vulnerable things. People who lose their hope quite literally lose their will to live. People cannot live without hope.
Christians should be the most hopeful people in the world. They have an opportunity to place their hope in someone who’s nicknames include, ‘eternal king’ ‘rock of refuge’, ‘stronghold of my life’, ‘high tower’ and ‘hope of Israel’. He sounds like a safe place to put your hope.
In our recent series on the book of Revelation, we discovered that the last words God wanted us to hear in his book, were words of hope. “He who is the faithful witness to all these things says, Yes, I am coming soon!” (Rev 22:20). In that promise lies the hope that that there is one who has not given up on us, and who has the power and the intention to, one day, put all things right. In the meantime, he asks us to become beacons of hope for a world that desperately needs it right now.
– Phil.
