God has been speaking to me much about hope. Hope is an abstract idea; one that is difficult to wrap our arms around. Of course we know when we have it and we definitely know when we’ve lost it. We can see it in the people around us—a room of people all cheering for the same team, hopeful for a win or an entire nation worn down from a year of confusion, loss and pain… hopeless. The dean of our seminary recently made the statement, “We must attend to the quality of our hope.” With that statement, I realize an error in the way I have understood hope. I often think of it as a final state we find ourselves in or a fixed condition—hopeful or hopeless– that changes as our circumstances change. But I don’t often consider hope as something to manage, to attend to or to even cultivate. What a great error.
So, I’ve begun to pay attention to hope and specifically the circumstances and things that make me feel hopeful. And of course, I’ve been paying attention to what the Bible says about hope. Paul, as always, has much to say on the subject. He refers to God as the God of hope and the Spirit as the one who fills us with overflowing hope. (Rom 15:13) He emphasizes in Ephesians that though we were once a people with no hope we have been brought near to God by the blood of Christ. (Eph 2) As believers, we tend to view our hope in an eschatological sense– we will be with God when we die. Amen! We should focus on this hope! However, a great hope is often overlooked and that is the hope we have in our current relationship with God. The message of the Gospel is not simply that someday we have hope and we must wait until that day. No, the message of the Gospel is that the blood of Christ made it possible for us to enter into relationship with three persons of the Trinity. Through Christ we find ourselves in the divine inner circle. What great hope we find in our current circumstances when we open our eyes to the reality of our position in Christ.
So how then, do we practically attend to the quality of our hope? One way is to attune our hearts and our minds to the access we have to God. Through prayer, worship, reading of scripture, sharing with fellow believers, walking in nature, etc.… Daily we must make it a priority to do a wellness check on the status of our hope and press in as people who are meant to be marked by unshakable, unparalleled, glorious hope. May we remember that hope is not an emotion available to people in favorable circumstances but rather the birthright of those who find themselves washed in the blood of the One who against all logical hope raised from the dead to bring us an everlasting hope.
-CB
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