RESOURCES

“Hope” is not always a very hope-filled word. 

 “I hope” has come to express anticipation of no more than a less than likely outcome for our dreams and plans. “I hope” often attempts to accomplish no more than hanging onto a little bit of fading light in the black hole of a future filled with darkness. “I hope” is what we say when we cannot say “I am confident,” “I am sure.” That is quite the opposite of the words “I hope” when said by biblical writers and those who echo them into our own day. Biblical hope fills the black hole of the future with the person of Jesus Christ. Christ glows in the dark. As the evangelist John wrote of Jesus, “the true light that enlightens every person was coming into the world …to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God …” (John 1:9-13).

The phrase “you can run, but you cannot hide” begins a number of popular songs. The expression echoes the words allegedly said by the boxer Joe Louis about an opponent in the ring. It is true that there is no place to hide in such a defined, closed space, but one would think that somewhere in the universe, if not in the depths of some deep cave or as far into the jungle as you can cut your way through the vines, there would be some little hole where no one could find a person. True perhaps in the case of the best of searching parties, but not true for God. There are times when we want to run and hide, and there are times when we get lost in life’s jungles or deserts and long for his company. King David had experienced both feelings. David confessed in Psalm 139 that the Lord had been keeping track of him, both when his tracks showed his hurried pace to escape the Lord’s watchful eye and when his tracks showed him desperately searching for the presence of his God. In this psalm David actually took comfort in knowing that God could find him wherever he happened to end up at the end of any day.

Heading for the stadium, I heard the band start up the school song, and long before I got to the gate, I was humming along. Late for church, the moment I opened the door to the narthex and heard the familiar hymn, I started singing along, even before I reached my pew. The melody erased my regrets about being late and concentrated my thoughts on the game, on the worship. Melodies float through the wind and grab hold of us, sometimes when we least expect to be able to sing. Voices lifted in praise whisper from around the throne of the Lamb, singing their joy and delight into the drab and dejection of the daily grind, catching us unawares with their everlasting song.

Martin Luther told children to get into conversation with God. “He wants to entice us,” the reformer wrote in explaining the address of the prayer that Jesus taught us, to believe “that he is truly our Father and we are truly his children in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving Father.” That is sometimes easier said than done.

Personally, I like to avoid conflict, but sometimes the other person whom I encounter loves it. That is the way it is with me and Satan. “I lie, you die” was his introduction of himself; he got that line from Jesus (John 8:44). The worst thing about his conversation with me is that it finds resonance altogether too often inside of me. A fifth column has penetrated the walls of my being and works effectively to weaken my defenses. No matter how often I call the public safety officers at the Holy Spirit’s headquarters, my own arrogant rebellion against my Creator and Lord continues to peek out and flame up, spewing its poison into my system again.

When I was a child, I sang the hymn “In the Cross of Christ I Glory” by the British diplomat, imperial administrator, and poet, John Bowring, a Unitarian layman. With him I sang of Christ’s cross as it towered over the wrecks of time and shone its glorious light around his head sublime. Its radiance added luster to the day. When I got a bit older, we began to sing “Lift High the Cross,” with a text from two Anglican priests, George W. Kitchin and Michael R. Newbolt. It summoned the world to adore Christ’s sacred name, for he is victorious and leads his people in conquering ranks against death and hell. Kyle Borcherding glories in a cross that has blood running down it, with a weak, suffering, scorned, shamed, dethroned man on it, a man whose throne is in fact in heaven at the right hand of his and our heavenly Father. And Borcherding expects us to find glory there.

God himself is present. Throughout Scripture people encountered God and conversed with him. He was at hand, there, where people were. Sometimes his presence made them uncomfortable, and sometimes his presence brought peace and joy. Sometimes it seemed that he had gone away, leaving his people in one wilderness or another. But it always turned out that he had been there all the time. He was the promised “Immanuel” (God with us) (Isa. 7:14, Matt. 1:23), who assured us that he would be with his people to the end of the age (Matt. 28:18). Those who trust in him sometimes wonder where he is, but they always find out that he was there all along.

It was one of the most memorable Christmas Eve’s I have ever experienced. It happened on the 5^th night of my 18-month-old daughter’s hospitalization as she battled a particularly brutal strain of RSV. As I lay alone on the plastic hospital couch and listened to the other child in the double room cry loudly that night I was questioning if my daughter would ever be able to recover from this virus and pondering how far away God felt in that moment. On that less than silent night, it felt like hope was far away, that there was no peace in my corner of the earth, and that there was no joy present in my world. Even on Christmas Eve, Bethlehem seemed so far away.

Instability seems to be shaking the foundations of our world on all sides. Where can we find a place to stand on firm ground? What offers a sure place where we can leave change and deterioration behind? What can give me an immovable, unshakable anchorage? Simon and Garfunkel expressed the hope that one can shield himself with the self-made armor of his own room, protected from the love that has only brought tears and disappointments. “I am a rock. I am an I-land,” they sang. But “I” prove less than a reliable, unshakable rock, and the delusion of my attempt to stand still and rest on my own two feet just tumbles me into doubt and despair. The seventeenth-century English poet John Donne recognized that no one is an island. My own stability and reliability as a sure place to stand quivers at the sound of the ambulance siren, for I know that the siren also wails for me.

As the year 1971 began, Walter Ulbricht had directed life in the German Democratic Republic, under the tutelage of his Soviet mentors in Moscow and their military might, for a quarter of a century, as head of the ruling Marxist party and for a few years also as head of state. In the middle of 1971, I attended a pastoral conference in East Berlin. The massive presence of propaganda slogans—“the head, the brain, the soul of the People is the State,” for example—and the East German pastors’ stories of governmental pressure on Christians from Kindergarteners to the elderly quickly made an impression on me. I asked one of the pastors, “Humanly speaking, how can the church survive in this situation?” Ignoring my “humanly speaking,” he replied, “Walter Ulbricht is not the Lord of the church.” Ironically, by the end of 1971, Walter Ulbricht was not even lord of the DDR. His comrades had forced him from power, replaced by a new generation.

Trying to wrap our minds around God not only frustrates, it breaks our minds. He—“he” indicates that God is a person—exceeds our imaginations in unimaginable ways. Trying to stretch our minds into his immensity and his timelessness brings our thinking to its point of collapse every time. God in his fullness is hidden from us not just because we are sinners who have consciously and determinedly tried to avoid looking at him. The Creator in his totality extends far beyond the competence of our fantasy because Creators are simply greater than what they create.

We encounter the hosts and hordes of the Deceiver and Murderer on battlefields scattered across our lives. They come at us not only in daily confrontations with all the luring offers of pleasure and profit in media of all kinds, but also assault us with a plethora of opportunities to gain an advantage over others or take advantage of them at work, at home, at school, or at play. 

It is not easy to be a hip. The feet make a mistake, take a false step, and the hip suffers. The hip suffers not only from being twisted the wrong way but also from the complaints of other parts of the body that depend on a healthy hip and feel its twist at a distance. Hips like to do things their own way, and the feet or the back do not always agree.