Hope

When a Christian talks about hope, what do they mean? Is it a wish? Is it like holding your breath as a “Hail Mary” pass flies to the hands of a wide receiver?

To Emily Dickinson, hope is “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” For the apostle Paul, Christian hope is rooted in God’s action in Christ. God has saved us and our response to that salvation is something rising up in us called “hope.”   In Romans 8 we read, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

When a Christian talks about hope, it’s not just an ethereal wish. It’s grounded in God’s saving action in Christ.  Christian hope is a lot like the Christian notion of mystery. My systematics professor told us that Christian mystery is not just a throwing up of hands. He reminded us that the mystery of faith is not “I don’t know, I don’t  know, I don’t know.” It’s “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”  

Christian hope is wild and untamed and audacious hope, like Dickinson’s wild bird of the soul. It stands in the gap of government shutdowns and a collective lack of options to whisper words about angels and Easter and a love that is stronger than death.  It allows for mustard seeds turning into great shrubs. However, it’s not a cotton candy hope.  It’s a hope that’s firmly grounded in God’s promises in Christ. It is invisible and mysterious, and at the same time, strong enough to risk everything for. That’s why we can stand at a graveside and proclaim the “sure and certain hope” of the resurrection.   It is a wild leap of faith into God’s often unseen, but still sure and certain, embrace.

“My hope (all wild and audacious, all unruly and unlikely) is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness…On Christ the solid rock I stand (sometimes my legs quiver, but I stand), all other ground is sinking sand. All other ground is sinking sand.”