Sometimes life hands us some tricky situations. Former President Ronald Reagan likes to tell a story that he says is true about a newspaper photographer out in Los Angeles who was called in by his editor, and told of a fire that was raging out in Palos Verdes. His assignment was to rush down to a small airport, board a waiting plane, get some pictures of the fire, and be back in time for the afternoon edition. Breathlessly, he raced to the airport, and drove his car to the end of the runway. Sure enough, there was a plane waiting with all the engines all revved up, ready to go. He got aboard, and at about 5,000 feet, he began getting his camera out of the bag. He told the fellow flying the plane to get him over the fire so he could take his pictures and get back to the paper. From the other side of the cockpit there was a deafening silence. Then he heard these unsettling words: “Are you not the instructor?!”
Some of us have been in situations like that one. Our lives have been going along smoothly. We thought we were in control, when “oops!” a little voice has whispered in our ear, “Are you not the instructor?” and we realize we were in trouble.
Most, if not all, of us have problems. Some people think that if you have money, all your problems will be solved. Sometimes it helps to have money, but it does not take away all of the problems.
Others think that if we follow Christ, we won’t have problems anymore. But we know that is not true. We have problems at work and at school. Others are unhappy about their appearance. That is why plastic surgeons are making a lot of money. Some are hurting with the heartache of a broken relationship. Others are grieving over a loved one who died. Some are going through the trauma of having a loved one diagnosed with a debilitating disease, or who had been told by the doctor they could not do anything anymore.
And just recently, we watched on TV of people in Japan who lost homes and loved ones because of the tsunami and earthquake. Here in the Philippines, we see some flooding and people losing their homes. And in the different parts of the world, a lot of people are dying fighting for their freedom.
With all these man-made and natural calamities, I hear a lot of questions: “Are we being punished by God? “Is God angry with us?” “Is there hope for us?”
Erskine White wrote, “When we are young, we want to be reassured about the direction of our lives. The future is a little frightening and we wish we could know what it will bring. When we are middle-aged, we want to be reassured about the meaning of our lives. We want to know that our lives are still significant, even if some of our dreams and delusions have faded. And when we are older, we want to be reassured about the promises of life, the promises of our golden years, and in particular, the promise of eternal life. The future is the great unknown and we wish we could face it with perfect grace and faith. That is why we need a way to live with hope, year in and year out, even when there seems no reason to hope. As faithful people, we need a way to believe in tomorrow even when we are troubled about today.”
Our text from the letter of St. Paul to the church in Rome is about hope. It is about a Creator God who is at work bringing order out of chaos, joy out of pain, character out of conflict. “For the creation waits with eager longing,” writes St. Paul, “for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” (RSV)
At first, St. Paul wrote about the suffering that is going on around. He said that the “whole creation has been groaning in travail”. In fact, he said in verse 26, “For we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” In other words, our needs go far beyond the power of speech to express them.
However, he continued on to paint a magnificent picture of a world in which hope is triumphant. He said, “Since we hope, we must realize that something greater than anything we know is in store for us, for who hopes for what he sees? Since we have such a great and confident expectation, we must wait for it with patience.”
The good news for us today is we can live in the light of that hope. Whenever we feel that things are too much for us to take, and it would seem that there is not much we can do, think of the hope that Paul is telling us.
I know that when we are lying down in a hospital bed not sure whether we are getting well on not, it is difficult to have hope; when a loved one dies, and we struggle with our grief, it is difficult to believe that things would get better; when I talk with someone who could not take a family member home because they do not have the money to pay, it is difficult to talk to them that things will be okay; when relationships are severed and words had been said that hurt, it is hard to talk about reconciliation.
But according to Vaclav Havel in Disturbing the Peace
L.B. Bridgers served as a Kentucky pastor with his wife and daughters. Tragedy struck and he was called home from a winter meeting. His family had perished in a fire that swept through their home. Now he was alone. How do you cope with such unmitigated sorrow and still maintain your character? L. B. Bridgers stood in the ashes of his home and wrote: “All my life was wrecked by sin and strife,/Discord filled my life with pain,/Jesus swept across the broken strings,/Stirred the slumbering chords again.”
That is how it is done. I know it is not easy if you are facing problems that seem impossible to solve, problems that are beyond description. But as we look at the heroes of faith in the Bible; the basis for their hope did not rest in themselves; their hope rested completely and utterly in God. That is why they could “hope against Hope”.
As we see but violence and brutality; sickness, sorrow and scandal; trial and tribulation at every turn? When we see but a steadily more degraded environment and a diminution of human dignity, with rich nations too wealthy to help the poor, and poor nations too impoverished to help themselves? When we look at the world our children and grandchildren will inherit and see no reason to hope, we still can hope because our God is just and faithful.
Our God keeps His promises. And through Jesus, we have a source of faith and strength that is available to us at every turn of life’s highway. When we follow this Jesus to the foot of the Cross, we see how a worldly symbol of defeat and rejection is transformed by the grace of God into the ultimate symbol of victory and redemption.
With perfect trust in Jesus, there is no such thing as hopelessness anymore. There is only the love of God in Jesus Christ, in whom we may hope against hope.
