You might see it hanging over someone's fireplace: "Faith! Hope! Love!"
A response when there are no other words to use: "You've gotta put your HOPE in Jesus!"
If I were to ask you to define it, what you would say?
Wikipedia says:
It is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in
one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events
will turn out for the best...
When used in a religious context, hope...being aware of what Christians see as spiritual "truth". It is not a physical emotion but a spiritual grace. Hope is
distinct from positive thinking, which refers to a therapeutic or systematic
process used in psychology for reversing pessimism. The term false hope refers
to a hope based entirely around a fantasy or an extremely unlikely outcome.
Let me bring you over to a story in John 11. It's about our buddy Lazarus & his sisters Mary & Martha.
Character Background:
- Mary was the one who poured her expensive purfume over Jesus's feet.
- Mary & Martha had Jesus over to their home and served him food
- Jesus loved each of these sibilings.
Lazarus was sick & dying. Jesus knew it. He stayed put. But said, "This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it." Not only did he not immediately get up and begin the journey to seeing them, but he WAITED two more days!
Then Jesus said something wise (something about travelling in the daylight where you won't stumble versus night where it's easy to get tripped up) and insisted that he and the disciples would travel back to Judea. His reasoning was that his friend, Lazarus, was "asleep", and he was simply going to go wake him up.
Now, the wording John uses or rather the words Jesus spoke seems quite...mundane compared to the actual actions he was going to take. Maybe he was just downplaying the situation, to keep them unalarmed?
I could keep going with the story, but the part of the story I want to get to is the fact that when Jesus arrived, Lazarus was dead, the sisters were upset:
- Martha had ultimate HOPE that in the last day their brother would be resurrected, and
- Mary came and crumbled at Jesus' feet crying to him that her brother would have not died if he had been there.
The bible says that Jesus was deeply moved - even to the point of weeping himself. And in response to all the weeping he did with the sisters and the others who were sad about Lazuarus, he said:
"Did I not tell you that if you BELIEVED, you would see the glory of God?"
And with that statement, Lazuarus was alive again.
So as God brought this story to me 3 times this last week, it seems that what I need to take from it is HOPE. That God can even resurrect a dead person right there on the spot, that He can also take a "hopeless" situation and bring new light to it.
Hope cannot be placed in the thing you're longing for: a spouse, a child, a job, a sale/purchase of a home - but rather place your Hope (and believe) that He will take the hopeless situation and bring goodness to it.
Father God,
Thank you waiting for Lazurus to die. Thank you that You desired your greatest glory to be revealed in bringing him back to life. When the things of this world seem so uncertain and so final I pray that we sink into the hope you offer us and hope for the glory to be revealed in the midst of our struggles. It is through our suffering that you change us to be more like you, and it is through hope that keeps us sane. May you help us to place our hope in the outcomes you have planned and not focus on hoping for the things we want.
Praise you for the resurrection of Lazurus, and for YOUR resurrection so that we who BELIEVE can be resurrected on that day too.
Amen.
