Some weeks into last semester, I found myself asking the Lord about hope. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick,” Proverbs 13:12 points out, and my heart was sick. Too much hope had been crushed, too many ideals and desires and passions broken again and again by the hard reality I saw every day. There were weeks, when the brokenness and death and darkness were too overwhelming, when I would cry out to the Lord, longing for a hope that did not disappoint. What is hope? I wondered. Where does it come from? Why do our spirits need it so desperately? And where is it when every vulgar, hateful and angry insult imaginable is hurled, or when books and pencils begin replacing those words? When students are literally trying to escape out the window because we’re on lockdown for eight hours due to gang-related violence? Where is hope when the police come with metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs and a place of learning turns into a prison? When there’s blood on the walls because the chaos and defiance are stronger than I am? And perhaps more importantly, why should I even seek it out when the disappointment of its failure is so overpowering, so utterly deflating? What is the point of opening myself to that kind of despair again and again?
I searched the Scriptures, wanting to understand this strange and intangible thing we call hope. I read Romans 5’s claims that somehow, inexplicably, we can “rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.” What? Suffering ultimately produces hope? How?? This upside-down, inside-out Kingdom never ceases to take me off guard, challenging me to lower myself in humility and learn to see things from the underside, from the perspective of the One who lowered himself all the way to death. What’s more, Paul goes on to proclaim that “hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” How is this possible when you feel confronted on all sides by all the ways hope is disappointing you?
So I looked up the Greek word for hope, which comes from “elpis”, from the primary word “elpo”. This means “to anticipate, usually with pleasure. It is the expectation of good and that in which one confides or to which he flees for refuge” (www.blueletterbible.org). It is the expectation of good and a place to flee for refuge. What is it about hope that forms refuge?
Then I was drawn back to Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Of course! Hope has something to do with the Holy Spirit. Hope overflows by the power of the Holy Spirit and is grounded in trust in the Lord. And trust in the Lord is based on His unfailing love. “‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:10). There’s the core: the substance of hope is found in God’s unfailing love.
What’s more, this is how suffering eventually produces hope, because as you learn to persevere, as you experience first-hand the Lord’s incomparable strength at work in you, when you see his grace and his peace and love make the impossible possible, you come to know him in a new and deeper way. It is here, when you know firsthand the faithfulness of His unfailing love, that hope springs new. Every time a dream that has died rises again by the power of Jesus Christ; every time the redemption of God restores a gift that has been stolen; every time the beaten down lift their heads and stand strong in the eternal promise of the Father’s love; every time the broken find their strength renewed by the unmistakable joy of the Lord, hope springs new. When you see first-hand that the enemy can’t win, that his power has been stripped from him, that the greater power of Jesus overshadows him, hope is birthed in you. When you drink from the living waters of the Spirit, from the fountain of life that flows through your soul, renewing and refreshing and you are made new, hope rises. This is the beauty of the Kingdom, of the God who loves us with an unfailing love. Only he can take the refuse of the world and the darkest nights and create new life through this inscrutable thing we call hope.
“The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.” ~Psalm 147:11
