A hope that crushes

Over the last couple of years I've seen a few friends of mine really struggle with health, in ways that are quite gut-wrenching. Your heart just goes out to them.

What I find quite paradoxical is that a lot of the suffering inflicted is actually due to the advances we've made in modern medicine. We are offered hope in what would have been totally hopeless situations a few hundred years ago. But sometimes it's just a flicker of hope, a percentage, a chance. You have to fight, battle and strive. And then cope with the crushing disappointment if it doesn't happen, or the problem is never truly overcome.

Sometimes there's no end, no final resolution, no way of moving on. Because treatment still offers some hope, the battle is never over.

Modern science and medicine is amazing though. But you really have to take the good with the bad. Last month, an emergency c-section probably stopped my wife from dying in childbirth. Incredible. Open heart surgery saved my brothers life. But cancer still claimed my Granddad when he was 58. Some situations work out really well. Others open you up to the torture of hope, met with failed treatment. Sometimes that flicker of hope seems to loom slightly out of reach and never delivers.

God, we need you!

Hope set slightly off

I was on a preaching course back in February with the founding pastor of my church, and he's an absolutely awesome guy. At one point he was talking about hope, and his musings on why a lot of people become grumpy in old age. His theory is this: you're hope must be in Jesus Christ alone. But it's easy set it very slightly off. You can add something else into the equation, like being a preacher, an evangelist or a church leader. The older you get, the more it dawns on you that those things may never happen. And a despair sets in.

That totally hits the nail on the head. It's good to be ambitious for Christ, but we have to tread very carefully not to let those things creep in as a source of assurance and right-standing before God. We come empty handed, not by works.

The king is not saved by his great army;
   a warrior is not delivered by his great strength.
The war horse is a false hope for salvation,
   and by its great might it cannot rescue.

Behold, the eye of the LORD is on those who fear him,
   on those who hope in his steadfast love,
that he may deliver their soul from death
   and keep them alive in famine.

Our soul waits for the LORD;
   he is our help and our shield.
For our heart is glad in him,
   because we trust in his holy name.
Let your steadfast love, O LORD, be upon us,
   even as we hope in you.

Psalm 33:16-22

We'll soon be there

"The joys of heaven will surely compensate for the sorrows of earth. Hush, hush, my doubts! Death is but a narrow stream, and thou shalt soon have forded it. Time, how short – eternity, how long! Death, how brief – immortality, how endless! ... The road is so, so short! I shall soon be there"

Charles H. Spurgeon

Dissecting Verses: Romans 15:13

"May the God of hope ¹ fill you ² with all joy and peace ³ as ⁴ you trust ⁵ in him, so that you may overflow ⁶ with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit ⁷."

My thoughts...

¹ God is being described here as the God of hope. That immediately raises the question "why?". God is many, many things and this is just one of his attributes. It's because, I think, it is incredibly easy to despair in this life. Hope is very good, and this is a reminder that God is the source.

² "fill you" → the notion of filling implies that you can be full or you can be empty, or somewhere in between. Perhaps you can have a certain measure of hope in your soul at any given time. Perhaps it's something that rises and falls, and changes over time. Maybe it's something that depletes if left unattended.

³ "all joy and peace" → who wouldn't want that? Is there a man or woman alive who wouldn't want to be completely full of joy and peace? Isn't this the void in our lives that the world is incessantly trying fill with all sorts of idols and pleasures? I would guess this is the thing most people spend their lives in search of.

An interesting definition of peace which I've heard is this: "peace is not the absence of trouble but the presence of God, even in the most troubled situation". Also, I've often heard joy described as a sort of consistent inner state, like a thermostat setting on your life; distinguishable from happiness which is simply an emotion experienced at a particular moment in time.

⁴ "as" → a crucial point. It's the key link in the chain, a conditional pivot point. It's something that we have to choose to do, and simply won't happen by itself. Suggests that our default position is a distinct lack of hope, joy and peace.

⁵ "trust" → I don't know about you, but I tend not to trust people I don't know. To trust God requires you to know him on a personal level. To have a relationship with someone you need to spend time with them, interacting, listening and speaking. Meditation and prayer are the order of the day. My dictionary describes trust as "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something". This firm belief has to be rooted in our knowledge and experience of God in our day-to-day lives.

⁶ "overflow" → it's back to this idea of filling. The level at which God wants you to be full of hope is the level at which you are completely overflowing. It spills out on the people around you.

⁶ "by the power of the Holy Spirit" → suggests that a mark of being full of the Holy Spirit is your level of hope. If it's a quality that is severely lacking in our lives then it suggests we need to trust in God again. We need to go back to the word of God and re-align ourselves.