Got Hope?
Hope is quite a word. Everyone from poets to politicians to preachers recognizes that there is power in the word, “Hope.” Hope and its siblings “hoped, hopeful, hopes, and hoping” appear 148 times in the Bible. “Hopeless,” appears once (Jeremiah 2:25, if you’re interested). I did a study of the word “hope” in the Bible this week and realized something I hadn’t noticed before. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Psalms have more references to hope (26) than any other book in the Bible. Since the Psalms are the prayers and songs of the people, they encourage us repeatedly to “Hope in God.” For example,
December 5, 2010: Romans 15:4-13, Got Hope?
Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church
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Psalm 9:18, “But the needy will not always be forgotten, nor the hope of the afflicted ever perish.”
Psalm 31:24, “Be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the LORD.”
Psalm 33:18, “But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love.”
Psalm 39:7, “My hope is in you.”
Psalm 43:5, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
Psalm 71:5, “For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, my confidence since my youth.”
Psalm 119:74, “May those who fear you rejoice when they see me, for I have put my hope in your word.”
Psalm 130:7, “O Israel, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem.”
The book with the second most references to hope might surprise you or it might not, it is the book of Job. Job suffered the loss of all his children, virtually all of his property, and his good health. Job struggles mightily with maintaining a sense of hope in the face of such overwhelming suffering and adversity. Eventually Job emerges from the storm of his terrible trial with a deeper personal relationship with the Almighty far beyond what he had previously known.
The book with the third most references to hope is Paul’s letter to the Romans. Writing about Abraham, Paul says that “Hoping against hope, he believed” that what God had promised him would come to fruition. Sometimes we have to hope against hope – in spite of the evidence we see we still cling to hope that things can be better or different. Romans 8:24-25 states, “For by hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” There seems to be a relationship between hoping and waiting. In Spanish the verb “esperar” means both to hope and to wait. We hope for something because we do not yet fully possess it. There is also a relationship between hope and dealing with suffering as Job demonstrates. In Romans 12:12, we’re told to “rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering.”
In chapter 15 as Paul is nearing the end of his letter to the church in Rome he once again comes back to the importance of hope. Romans 15:4-13, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written, “Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles, and sing praises to your name”; and again he says, “Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people”; and again, “Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles, and let all the peoples praise him”; and again Isaiah says, “The root of Jesse shall come, the one who rises to rule the Gentiles; in him the Gentiles shall hope.”
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Hope is a word that appears frequently on the pages of the Bible. We are encouraged by the steadfastness of women and men facing hard times who held onto hope and God’s promises. The passage from Isaiah 11:1-10 that we read as a call to worship and that Paul refers to in Romans 15 is about a stump and yet it is a passage of hope. When you see a stump most people don’t look at that and feel hopeful about a tree. It means there was a tree and now it’s gone. If we knew the tree before it was cut down we might be even less hopeful. The people of Israel saw their nation invaded and conquered and the temple in Jerusalem destroyed, and many survivors carried off into exile and slavery. How do you hold onto hope in a circumstance like that when the tree of your nation has been cut down and seemingly destroyed? You keep looking to the Lord. Isaiah says out of the stump of Jesse shall come a new shoot, a new leader, and “the spirit of the Lord will rest on him.” Someone powerful and good is coming who will make things right. Like Isaiah, when we feel life is chopping us down, we can hold on to hope by looking to the Lord, by remembering those who endured tough times before us, and by taking a long-range view. It takes time for a shoot to grow into a new tree. “All it takes is one bloom of hope to make a spiritual garden.” Terri Guillemets
The passage from Matthew’s Gospel about John the Baptist may not at first reading seem like such a hopeful text because it talks so vividly about the need to confess sin, change behavior, repent, and bear fruit. “Look out,” John says, one who is more powerful than we can imagine is coming. The hopeful part of John’s message is that we can repent; we can change our ways before it is too late. We can receive the Holy Spirit and be born again in a spiritual way. The invitation to repent and be baptized is a message of hope that God has not given up on us so we shouldn’t give up on ourselves or anyone else. Charles L. Allen put it this way, “When you say a situation or a person is hopeless, you’re slamming the door in the face of God.” When the world says, “Give up,” Hope whispers, “Try it one more time.”
There are so many scriptures that encourage us to have hope – to hold on, to persevere, to keep on believing. If we are worrying about the future Proverbs 23:18 reminds us, “There is surely a future hope for you, and your hope will not be cut off.” Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, spent seven years on her new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil and gasoline. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War.
The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics as the youngest member of the US Olympic Team and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown.
Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond that lay a trial even greater. Zamperini would spend 47 days at sea before being captured by the Japanese. From then until the war’s end in 1945, he was engaged in a brutal struggle to survive. He was imprisoned at infamous prisoner-of-war camps on Kwajalein Atoll (nicknamed “Execution Island”) and the secret interrogation center Ofuna. Murderously sadistic guards, starvation rations and bloody dysentery all whittled away at his body and soul. Finally, he wound up at Naoetsu POW camp northwest of Tokyo, where a psychotic prison official known as “The Bird” made it his mission to break Zamperini down.
Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. Unbroken is a testament to both the utter depravity of humanity and to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.
Louis Zamperini is a great example of what Christopher Reeve said after the horseback riding accident that left him paralyzed: “Once you choose hope, anything’s possible.” I read a book review of Unbroken by Maria Flook in The Boston Globe on November 14 that concluded, “Back home, Zamperini suffered flashbacks… but his new wife introduced him to the Rev. Billy Graham at a Bible tent meeting. His government-issue Bible had “made no sense to him,’’ but “born again’’ his post-traumatic stress symptoms disappear. He earned a living as a Christian speaker on ocean liners and ran a nonprofit boys camp. He visited a Japanese prison to forgive his jailed captors.” The reviewer then laments that, “Finding God is an all too familiar ending,” as if Unbroken was a work of fiction rather than the true account of what happened to a real person whose courage and hope are beyond amazing and whose relationship with God gave him a sense of peace after suffering through torture and torment so awful it is hard to read about it, much less to personally experience it and survive. Samuel Johnson wrote, “Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness, of captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable.”
Romans 5:2, 4-5 proclaims, “We boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Whatever our situation or circumstance or trial or test – we can face it better with hope. Hope is not something that is given to us, it is an attitude and a stance toward life that we need to courageously choose and cultivate again and again.
“Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them.” Vincent McNabb
Hope is that thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops… at all. Emily Dickinson
Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. Anne Lamott
The miserable have no other medicine but only hope. William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
“You’ve gotta have hope. Mustn’t sit around and mope.”
Without hope life is meaningless.
Without hope life is meaning less and less. Author Unknown
Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960
Hope is putting faith to work when doubting would be easier.
Hope is the physician of each misery. ~Irish Proverb
Hope never abandons you, you abandon it. ~George Weinberg
Some see a hopeless end, while others see an endless hope.
“Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark.” ~George Iles
“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” Albert Einstein
Hope is the word which God has written on the brow of every man. Victor Hugo
“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Advent is a season of hope. It is a time to remember that God can bring new growth from a stump, new beginnings where none seemed possible, health out of sickness, transformation from seemingly unbreakable habits, and deliverance from captivity. It is a time to remember if we’ve got Jesus in our heart and life, we’ve got hope no matter what else happens in life or in death.