That was fast.
A few weeks ago, I asked, “How do we hold onto hope?”
I got my answer the same day.
I was praying in the chapel of one of the schools we do ministry in. It was time for morning prayers, which are done over the intercom. Each morning the principal offers a little reflection on the day’s gospel. The gospel reading that day was Luke 24:13-35, the appearance of our Resurrected Lord to the disciples on the Road to Emmaus. As the principal spoke, she said these words: “When we are too focused on ourselves, we can miss how close Jesus is to us, and miss the hope and joy he wants to give us.”
Preach it, sister.
This is how we hold on to hope. Move outside of ourselves and focus on others. Take a minute to stop complaining about all the things that are hard or difficult, and notice instead where and how the Lord is walking right next to us, eager to give us hope and life.
How often, though, in an attempt to prevent disappointment, do we choose hopelessness? We hear it all the time: “Don’t get your hopes up.” That’s really code for “Don’t dare to hope that things can be different.” We are like Ahaz, the ancient king of Judah, who, in the face of the huge Assyrian army is told to ask the Lord for a sign. Not just any sign, y’all, but one “deep as Sheol, or high as the sky” (Is 7:11). God wants Ahaz to hope, to pray big, to give Him a chance to show off His might and power and love.
Ahaz responds with the ancient equivalent of “Thanks, but no thanks. I won’t get my hopes up.” He says, “‘I will not ask! I will not tempt the Lord!’” (Is 7:12) The handy footnotes in my bible say “Ahaz prefers to depend upon the might of Assyria rather than the might of God.” In other words, he prefers to depend on the power of what he can see, the impending invasion of the mighty Assyrian army, vastly stronger than Judah, than on the might of God. He prefers to remain in a sad trap of hopelessness rather than give life to even the smallest seed of hope that God can do anything.
Let me claim it for a second. I am Ahaz.
I prefer to trust the things I can see; the circumstances in my life I wish would change, but don’t believe will; the things I lack rather than the things that could be; what God isn’t doing rather than ask him to do big things and trust that he will.
I do not advocate for senseless hopefulness. I’m not telling you to ignore reality or live in a dream world where all your hopes and dreams come true. Sometimes they don’t. And false hope is the hope we place in ourselves, our circumstances, or the other broken humans that inhabit this planet with us. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I do support real hope, which is found in God–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
God can do anything. We just have to look up long enough to see him offer us new life.
