The Hum of Hope

It’s usually about this time during the season of Lent, that I start to give out. Twenty to thirty days of waiting seems to be about what my heart can hold. As I walk through the story of Jesus’ death, the accounts of his unfathomable love pushed right up against the very worst of our humanity…betrayal, abandonment, malice, unbelievable violence…my heart aches for the hope of the resurrection to burst forth. I want to shut my eyes for the last ten days. I can’t bear another day stuck in the place between the brutality of Jesus’ death and the miracle of his living again. And so sometimes, I distance myself. It becomes harder to sit with him in the morning and read the words in my Lenten devotional. I find myself putting it off and then reading through a few days all at once, quickly and without much thought, whispering a quick, “Thank you, Jesus” and moving on about my day.

My experience is that living in hope is real work. It takes real energy to live in that place between what is and what will be. It turns out the apostle Paul agreed with me. Or rather, that I agree with him. Romans 5:3-4 says, “^…but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴ perseverance, character; and character, hope.”  All of that work to produce hope, which isn’t even the thing we are hoping for, but just the hope itself. As if hope in and of itself is the prize. Is it?

In the grand scheme of eternity, because we live in the space between the resurrected Jesus and his coming again, hope is offered as a place for us to reside for the foreseeable future. But there are also a hundred little ways (that don’t feel so little) where I get to practice this as well. And living in hope for each of those things is also generally preceded by suffering and perseverance and developed character.

Maybe we hope for a loved one, who is sick, to be healed. We suffer with them and question God about why. We persevere in believing that He is good and near to the brokenhearted and learn to suffer with a more eternal perspective. Our character is shaped more and more by his nearness and by our learning dependence on him. We learn to hope that his goodness and his promises will be the final word in this battle.

Or maybe we hope for a child to love Jesus fully and look to him for life in spite of what the world is telling them. We suffer through the harsh words and the broken relationship. We persevere in our pleading prayers and our giving them over to the Lord again and again. Our character is shaped more and more as we let go of our own agendas, as he convicts us of our own sin the midst of our desires for our children. We learn to hope in the good news that he is in control and he loves them even more than us.

There are countless other ways that we get to practice this throughout our lives. None of it is easy and none of it is a straight line to hope as I’ve described above. We are too human for that. It takes a willingness to do battle against the lies of Satan, and a willingness to study and know the character of God. It also probably takes vulnerability with people who tell you the truth, and a willingness to grasp at that truth. In other words, it takes work. The hum of hope which marks our lives on this earth takes real effort to maintain. Because of this, I sometimes take the easier route. Fear. And anxiety. And hopelessness. Ironically, those things that seem to make life so hard are so instantly and easily at my fingertips whenever I lose perspective. They are ruthless, spinning my mind in all kinds of different directions which always end up placing me firmly at the center of my own universe. I start to problem solve, or angle for control, or else numb it all by shutting myself off from everything and descending into the dark. At the time, any of these seem easier than the work of hope.

But here is the thing about hope: As much work as it is to maintain, it isn’t illusive. Not in the least. Our Heavenly Father is too good to play hide and seek with us in regards to his goodness. At any and every moment, hope is a guitar string ready to be plucked, ready to start the low hum again in our lives. We look up and out, acknowledge our suffering to God. We weep and wail and ask him why. We persevere in our belief in his character, shaping our own in the process. And there it is. Hope returns. And, as Paul concludes in verse 5 of Romans 5, “hope does not disappoint, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."

I think Paul believed that, short of heaven, hope itself is the prize. Hope is our placeholder, the gift before the ultimate gift. Hope is the refrain of the Holy Spirit in every situation. It is the whisper of God in our hearts. “This is not all there is. He is coming back. Look up from this world and remember who He is. He has conquered all of this and will set it all right.”

This is the reality I want to know deeply. So, during the remaining days of Lent, I will open my eyes to the death of my dear Jesus. I will live the details of those hours as much as I can because I want to practice hope. I want to see and feel the bleakness of a Savior dying and dead and buried, so that I can experience the joy of his rising again. If I practice hope during these days of Lent, I might just learn how to live it in my every day life. As I learn to live it in the everyday things, I will know it deeply in the grand scheme of things as I await his glorious return. That is a hope, I’m told, which will not disappoint.

I’m counting on it.