Hope.
Those four
simple letters form an idea that every single person on earth is searching for.
From the moment we are conscious enough to understand that we are alive until
the day we die, we search for meaning. We look for purpose. We hunger for it
the same way we hunger for food.
Why?
There is
something inside us – something written on the very fabric of our beings – that
sees everything that is and understands that it isn't enough. Something tells
us that there must be more to creation than simply what we see.
There must be more to living than
simply being alive.
Here lies the greatest testimony to the
universal fallen state of the human race: we, knowing full well that we have a
purpose that is above and beyond us, do not know that which has been placed
before our very eyes since the beginning. The chief end of man is to glorify
God and enjoy Him forever. Indeed, in our natural state, we literally cannot come to know this. We are dead in
our trespasses.
We build
idols the same way we breathe. To quote Calvin, “Every one of us is, even from
his mother’s womb, a master craftsman of idols.” We look to anything and
everything we can find with our clawing fingers and place our hope in that. We
hope money will save us from hunger, that our knowledge will save us from being
inconsequential, that love will come and save us from loneliness.
Each and
every one of those things fails us. Wealth leaves us wanting more. Knowledge leaves
us empty. Love never comes. These hopes are not hopes at all. They are false.
Fake gods, playing at the real thing, like children dressing up in their father’s
clothes. In our blindness, we serve them as if they were real. As if they had
the power to save us. As if they were not the created things, but the Creator
Himself.
The Creator
would be perfectly just to wipe His ungrateful creation from the face of the
earth. We are worse than mere ingrates – we set ourselves up against Him,
attempting to claim the title of god for our own selves. We desire to set up
our own thrones and cast His down into the sea. We are his enemies.
Yet,
instead of crushing us underfoot, God has done something strange.
Instead of wiping
us out with fire, He opened our eyes. He opened our ears. He told us our purpose.
Instead of spilling our blood He shed his own so that the eyes of the sinful
man might see the glory of God – indeed, he has taken away mans’ very sin.
Our hope is
in Christ. Our hope is in grace. Our hope is that, one day, Christ will return
and make all things new. “For it was in this hope that we were saved. For hope
that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for
what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” (Romans 8:24-25 ESV)
So take
heart, brothers and sisters. Remember the hope in which you were saved. Your
mortal plans will fail you. Success will not bring you the sweetness it
promises. Love will not give you the fulfillment you desire. Friends will let
you down. This is because all these things are created things, not their
Creator. This is because all these things, no matter how good they may seem,
are still fundamentally broken.
But Christ
makes all things new. Christ, our sure foundation. Christ, the solid rock on
which we stand. Christ, who cannot be moved, or shaken, or destroyed. Christ,
who will never let us down.
In Him and
Him alone, we have true hope.
"If the whole universe were without meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." - C.S. Lewis
