we wait for the blessed hope –
the appearing of the glory
of our great God and Savior,
Jesus Christ
Titus 2:13
We're still looking for a full and rich Christian definition of hope. (Indeed, I trust that “hope” is big and richer than any simple catch-phrases we can come up, don't you think? Indeed, hope is probably as big as God himself!)
And what today's passage tells us is that hope is in the future.
Now … that's probably no big surprise to anyone. (Duh! Right?) We all know that we don't hope backward! We can't say, for example, that we hope that when we wake up tomorrow that the past will have changed and that Hitler didn't kill six million Jews after all. I certainly free to wish many things didn't happen in the past. But wanting to change the past is not hope.
The past, of course, is past. Hope points instead to changed future, a better future. True hope points, as we said yesterday, to God's plans, God's promises, God's future.
So what is God's future?
Today's verse doesn't tell what's ahead for you tomorrow. It tells what's ahead for you in ten thousand tomorrows. It is saying, "there will come a day when Christ will appear in glory."
And that's our ultimate hope. (Say that with me: Ultimate Hope.)
Yes, I can and should hope for God's will to occur 24 hours from now. God desires to bless his children. Daily! And yet God has also given us free will.
· Therefore, unless Christ comes tonight like a thief in the night, tomorrow you and I will sin, and we will reject God's loving desire for us.
· Tomorrow someone will also sin against you and they will stall God's loving desire for your life.
· There will be wars and rumors of wars. Why? Because of free will ... and its twin, called sin.
· Tomorrow loved ones will die. Why? Because death is the inevitable consequence of our free will and our rebellion.
Can I hope that all this pain goes away? Sure … but only if you use a secular definition of hope (as in: a wish). A Christian definition of hope, however, aligns with God's purposes, and our free will is obviously a high enough value in God's kingdom that a) he allows free will and rebellion and b) he loves us enough to come and die to set us free from the consequences that our free will and rebellion wreak.
So ... can I hope that all this pain goes away? Well ... let me revise my last answer. Yes, you can hope -- indeed, you can be confident -- that all this pain will go away! When? When our Savior appears in glory!
There will come a time when the Lord will wipe every tear from our eyes. As it says in Revelation 21, there will be a glorious day when death will be no more, when mourning and crying and pain will be no more.
That's what we long for.
That's what we hope for.
Day-by-day, we'll occasionally get glimpses of heaven on earth. But because of sin, we'll get glimpses of hell on earth too. When persecutions come, when loved ones are dying, when the battlefront nears your door (which it is for Christians in ISIS ravaged territory today), will you hope for earthly solutions? (Of course!) But when those earthly solutions don't seem to arrive frequently enough on this sin-stained planet, will you choose to start hoping for something bigger?
Hope is pointing forward (not backward). It is trusting that no matter what this world throws at us, God has a plan to bless us in the end. And until we adopt that ultimate hope, we will inevitably face times when we're unable to face the present.
In Christ's Love,
a guy whose life changed
when he adopted the outlook
that it's always a good day
to go to heaven
(when a friend taught this to me,
suddenly I quit worrying as much)
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