More than Thankful for Hope
Every year around this time, people sit at a large table surrounded by friends and/or family and ruminate on the things they are thankful for. And this, I think, is a fine thing to do. ”Very traditional,” one might say and also a way to realize how much God has already blessed us despite what we tend to think the rest of the year. I too am thankful for my family, friends, a new mini-van and house, turkey induced sleep and foggy, fall days. There are other things that I’m also thankful for, but in a different kind of way. I’m thankful for things I don’t have to do…here is the short list…
1. Because we only have to make 4 trips to Cleveland for Silas’ medical trial instead of 13 we will not have to drive the additional 4,365 miles over 72 hours costing around $675.00 in gas.
2. I’m thankful that I didn’t have to paint my house trim, rake my leaves by myself, clean our house for the kid’s birthday party or make the 8 frozen meals downstairs in the freezer because other people from our church did that for us. Wanting to help Silas and our family, they pitched in and gave. I am humbled and thankful.
But beyond that, I’m thankful for hope today. I’m thankful for hope that defies our “out-come based world”. And I guess I’m thinking about that because so many times my list on Thanksgiving is made up of things I have achieved or things I own.
But what happens when we have less this Thanksgiving than last Thanksgiving?
What happens when we pray for God to heal a loved one and they are not better or perhaps worse-off than before?
Has God stopped caring?
Has God stopped listening to our prayers?
This afternoon as I was driving home from a huge Thanksgiving meal where we stopped just short of the sin of gluttony, I was thinking about my son Silas who has lost quite a bit of ability in the last year. I was also thinking and praying for a wonderful family who gathered this Thanksgiving knowing that it would most likely be the last one with their husband and father who is battling cancer. And then I thought…have all of us been trying to win and simply lost? Are these situations that are hopeless?
No, no and again no!
Hope transcends today’s suffering. Hope transcends sin and death. This is a basic belief for Christians. The problem is this: even though we claim Jesus, we act as if our prayers are magical spells and He should answer all our prayers. But that’s not what he said is it?
He came with the name “Emmanuel”. He said that he would never leave us or forsake us. So God is with us no matter what changes or what outcomes we wish for or what ideas we conceive about God. He is with us. This isn’t an academic statement for me. God wasn’t just here for a time and has now left. He is here now. This is true and this is life and in this we have hope. He hasn’t left us and my list at Thanksgiving is just one, small, little example of that.
And if all of that is true…maybe the goal of hope isn’t for everything to be perfectly resolved.
Maybe things won’t always be better this Thanksgiving than last as our out-come based culture assumes.
Maybe this requires a shift in our thinking.
Maybe instead of hoping for “deliverance from” our suffering we should have hope for “deliverance through” the suffering. As one of my profs, Greg Wilde, has written,
…perhaps we are delivered from evil when, instead of avoiding it, we live through it with God and come out on the other side, shining. There is hope in midst of suffering, not because it will be over some day, although certainly it will be, but because God is there in the midst of it, now.
So this holiday season, I’m more than thankful for hope…hope that lasts…hope that remains. Yes, I’m thankful for hope.
** Quote from Anchoring Faith, Hope, and Love in Today, By Gregory Wilde, Adjunct Professor, Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies, July, 2008
worship360 and 
lois are discussing. 
lois 1:34 PM on December 6, 2011 Permalink |
thanks sam, i constantly need to be reminded of this, as much as i know it is true, it still makes some days hard, but i constantly hold onto God’s promise, to never leave me or forsake me, i thank God for you and the way the Spirit of God shines through you and Sara, it gives me no greater joy than to see my children walking by faith, you two have become a teacher to me, i love you, mom
worship360 11:45 PM on December 8, 2011 Permalink |
Mom, I love you. I saw much of this lived out in PA and am now experiencing it for myself. I think back many times to Grandpa and Grandma losing Uncle Timmy…and now how Grandpa’s most lucid moments now are about the past, when he prays and when he sings. All that to say, that as believers we must continue to teach each other and even our own souls about what is truly true and what is really real. As Psalm 62 put it…”find rest my soul”…sometimes you have to command your soul because it doesn’t always come naturally…lots of love…sam