hope

Hope that does not disappoint

It is a mystery how God uses suffering in our lives to make us more hopeful. You would think the opposite would happen. But Paul tells us that “suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character and character, hope.” (Romans 5:3-4 NIV) It’s obvious that suffering can produce perseverance, after all no pain, no gain. And if a person reacts properly to suffering it can also develop character. But what about hope? Ultimately how does suffering produce hope?

Two years ago this week, in the midst of stepping down from my role as a senior pastor and anticipating a new phase of life and livelihood I discovered a lump in my neck. That lump was like a squall appearing on the horizon that turned into a hurricane. It pummeled me for four months with visits to four physicians, two biopsies, a surgery to remove it, the discovery of thyroid cancer, another surgery to remove my thyroid, radioactive iodine treatment and a scar revision surgery.

Coinciding with all this income from a small business we run, which we were relying upon as part of my professional transition, totally disappeared as tornadic winds blew it away for five long months.

It was the perfect storm of trials in the area of career, health and finances. To be honest, I was so deluged by the winds and waves of life it felt like my little boat of faith was sinking and taking any life preserver of hope down with it.

I can vividly recall the sense of devastation as my plans and hope for the next chapter in my life were being swallowed up and the grip of the fear of death was threatening to drown everything I held dear.

The two year anniversary of the advent of the lump has given me pause. Several days ago, as I was contemplating the quality of my life and the depth of my hope before and after the storm, I could not help but give praise to God.

The Bible tells us that Abraham, in the midst of enduring a twenty five year trial, “even when there was no reason to hope, [he] kept hoping, believing that he would become the father of many nations.” (Romans 4:18) Another way of putting it is that “in hope against hope he believed.” This passage of scripture makes an important distinction between two kinds of hope – there is the hope that depends upon man and the hope that depends upon God. It is the difference between natural hope and super natural hope, temporal hope and eternal hope, human hope and God hope.

When the flame of human hope is extinguished as it was for Abraham (and category 4 and 5 storms have a way of doing that) there is an even greater more enduring hope from God that is available to sustain us. It is the kind of hope that is only produced and revealed through suffering.

This hope from God triumphs over despair because it is in God and His faithfulness, and not in ourselves or what we might dream of accomplishing.

That is a difficult and hard lesson to learn but 20/20 hindsight gives us God’s perspective on His hope-filled purposes for trials and suffering. My puny human hope and dreams sank during the perfect storm two years ago, but God supplanted it with His hope and my life is inexplicably better today because of it.

A condition I battled for years, pre thyroid cancer, was depression. It was something, only those closest to me were privy to. Most of the time it was like a dark, discouraging cloud hanging over my head, but there were a few times when it was debilitating.

One of the remarkable hope-filled things for which I praise God on this two year anniversary is that since having my thyroid removed, I have been free from depression. That marks a huge breakthrough in my life and makes all I went through more than worth it.

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Taking the hope dare

“Yet I still dare to hope . . .” Lamentation 3:21

I want to dare you to hope! If Jeremiah, the author of Lamentations, can dare to hope so can we. Very few people can testify to being in a more hopeless situation than Jeremiah and yet he found hope in God.

Imagine what it must have been like for someone to be a survivor of the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11. The sheer trauma of that event coupled with the loss of friends and coworkers is almost beyond comprehension. In many ways, picturing the modern day impact of the 9/11 tragedy gives us insight into the trauma Jeremiah experienced as a survivor of the death and destruction that Babylonians wrecked upon Jerusalem in 586 BC.

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Overcoming broken dreams

Broken dreams, everybody has them, but sadly most people have trouble resolving them. Picking our way through a field of broken dreams is not easy. The Bible, right from the outset introduces us to the harsh reality of dealing with broken dreams in our lives. Thankfully we can draw wisdom from those who have gone before us. Imagine what Adam and Eve had to go through to cope with their loss of paradise. And of course we all know what happened to the dreamer Joseph’s dreams. He suffered for years before his dreams made sense.

The book of Exodus introduces us to the biggest field of broken dreams anyone can imagine, it’s called the wilderness. First we encounter Moses whose dream of delivering Israel died with the Egyptian he killed. He ended up burying his dream-turned-nightmare in the backside of the wilderness. But the greatest lessons to be learned about overcoming broken dreams is the story of the children of Israel coming out of Egypt and passing through the wilderness into the Promised Land. The wilderness is the is that place we must pass through in the journey from promise to fulfillment. It is here that God teaches us how to pick our way through a field of broken dreams and position ourselves to be overcomers.

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