An Expectation of Hope
I once had a conversation with a former supervisor about hope. We were on our way back to the office after having lunch with some of our colleagues. I’m not sure how we got to talking about hope, but the subject came up on the elevator ride to our floor.
“I don’t know,” she said, “Hope seems kind of like you’re giving up. Like you wish something would happen. So you just hope so.”
I said, “Well, it all depends on where you are placing your hope. What’s the object of your hope? If that’s real then hope is a good thing.”
Now, I don’t remember if those were our exact words, but you get the jist of the conversation. My boss was looking at hope as a passive state. I was looking at hope as an active trust in something, really in Someone. After our brief exchange, I was rather pleased with my response, especially since I’m usually the one who doesn’t think of things to say until well after the fact.
But looking back now, my perspective has changed. Don’t misunderstand me. I still agree with what I said to my former supervisor. But now I have more years of life under the belt to know that I said the right things, but I had only lived out those words in a limited way. Hope to me at the time of that conversation was the obvious answer.
What had I known of despair, truly?
I won’t take the time here to give you my whole life’s story up until this point, but suffice to say, I have gone through some things. No one born into this fallen world can escape the effects of its falleness. Trials take on different forms, depending on life’s circumstances. But I’ve learned that no matter what station in life we’re in, we’re all affected by:
(1) our own sinfulness and
(2) the sinfulness of others
One way and the other, we are all struggling..
But if I’m honest, and it’s actually been a bit hard for me to admit this as I’m typing right now, but again, if I’m honest, a lot of things have come easy for me. If I’m honest, somewhere along the way I picked up the mindset that perhaps has become a hallmark of the Western brand of Christianity and it goes something like this:
- Do good = get good
- Do bad = get bad
- God helped me through my bad because I turned good
Now that’s a very simplistic way of describing it, but this is the type of thinking that creeps into our subconscious unawares. Well, I won’t put you in that category. I’ll just admit that this thought pattern snuck into my own mind. Interestingly enough, I abhor the false prosperity gospel, and I usually have a visceral reaction when I hear so-called preachers distort the scriptures to deceive their onlookers out of money. Yet in some ways I had embraced their false narrative that if you do good, you always get good. And if you’re in a bad situation, well, somehow you did something wrong. The false teachers usually emphasize money or physical health, but this false understanding spills over into other aspects of spiritual life.
To be sure, the bible does say that we reap what we sow (Galatians 6:7-8). What we do in this life has both temporal and eternal consequences. However, there’s a fuller picture of the gospel message. And I think at times, especially in times great struggle, we can be tempted to slip out of the full truth of scripture and into thinking:
Despair only comes to those who deserve it, and you can always have hope if you are doing the right thing.
It sounds really horrible when you say it out loud, but the first step to healing is to acknowledge you have a problem!
(By the way, I do hope you get something out of this blog post, but at this point, I’m preaching to myself!)
It turns out, this false belief system did not originate in the underbelly of the American prosperity gospel. This distortion of truth was popular in the ancient Near East in the time of King Ahab and the Prophet Elijah.
You Get What You Get Because You Deserve It?
You can read more about Elijah in I Kings chapters 17-19. Elijah and Elisha, his successor, are often confused in my mind, so I had to double check. Anyway, as I was reading the account of Elijah’s ministry to the widow and her son, one verse caught my attention. Elijah had just obeyed the Lord and settled by the brook Cherith where he experienced the miracle of the ravens feeding him. Then after the brook had dried up because of the prophesied drought, the Lord told Elijah to go to Zarephath where a widow woman would take care of him.
The scriptures tell us that Elijah obeyed. He did meet the widow and through their conversation, we learn that she was gathering sticks to make what she anticipated would be the last meal for herself and her son before they die. This drought was severe. But this widow woman did what Elijah asked, which was to make a little cake for the prophet first, for the Lord had promised that if she did so, she would have more than enough meal and oil to last the entire drought. And sure enough, the miracle of the never ending oil and meal did take place just as Elijah had spoken. And the woman, her son, and all her household survived.
Some time passed. Elijah was still staying with the widow and her son. But her son fell gravely ill and died. So the miracle of the meal and oil had saved his life, only for him to succumb to illness.
Now this next verse is what grabbed my attention. The widow approached the Prophet Elijah and said:
“What have I to do with thee, O thou man of God? Art thou come unto me to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son?" - I Kings 17:18
And there it is. The widow woman, while she is living in the middle of a miracle, questioned whether her son’s death was the result of her own sin. And then when I looked at the margin in my bible, it shed more light. I read that in the ancient Near East, suffering was often mistakenly considered to be solely the result of sin.
If the widow woman stopped to think, she might have asked herself:
Did the Lord God send the prophet to me and give me an unending supply of bread and oil because I was sinless and blameless? No.
So why do I automatically assume that after that great miracle, my son is now dead because I’ve done something wrong?
Did I get the good because I was good? Did I get the bad because now I had done something bad?
I won’t throw the widow woman under the bus because I believe we make the same false assumptions today. This distorted thinking is why someone with a straight face can ask a neighbor with a recent cancer diagnosis what they did wrong. Yes, absurdities like this happen.
Just look back at Job’s “friends”. Their response to poor Job, who was the pinnacle of care, kindness, judgment, and success in life, was to say, “Look man, you must have done something wrong for all this calamity to come your way. You must have some secret sin in your life.” (Job 4:7-8)
Even during Jesus’ time, his disciples asked him about the man born blind, “Did he sin or was it his parents’ sin that caused this?” (John 9:1)
So we can see that the widow woman was indeed not alone in assuming that bad results always mean bad actions preceded it.
I’ve learned that this wrong thinking actually stems from paganism. The idea that we must do certain things to garner favor from an onlooking God and that there is always a one to one relationship with negativity in life and our actions is not a picture of the God of the bible, but of the gods of our sinful imagination.
Many of us are serving this false god in our minds unawares. We read the pages of scripture that we are saved by grace through faith, and not of works, but this is so contrary to the way our fallen world works, it takes a miracle for the truth that Paul laid out so plainly to really sink in.
From Mountain High to Valley Low
Let’s go back to the Prophet Elijah. The widow woman had come to him with the body of her dead son. So he took the widow’s son to a loft and cried to the LORD. To summarize, he essentially said the same thing the widow said. ‘God, have you brought this evil upon the widow by slaying her son?” Elijah himself questioned God in this matter. After this great show of God’s miracle working power with the oil and meal, how could He just let the widow’s son die?
But Elijah then stretched himself over the child three times. Afterwards, He prayed to the LORD, and asked that God would bring life back into the child. And the scriptures indicate that God heard Elijah’s prayer, moved upon the son, and the son lived again.
And after all this, the widow said to Elijah, “Now by this, I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth.” (I King 17:24)
The LORD just out did Himself in the miracle department and resurrected the widow’s son.
Elijah had gone from the ravens feeding him to a miracle of multiplying oil and meal in the midst of devastating drought, to witnessing the power of God resurrect a dead child. What else can go right?
After staying in the widow’s household, God sent Elijah to King Ahab. In the world of good kings and bad kings, Ahab was the latter. He had disobeyed the LORD’s commands, married a foreign woman named Jezebel whose corrupting influence had caused King Ahab and Israel to fall into deep apostasy and idolatry.
Well, you likely know the story. Elijah confronted King Ahab and ordered him to gather up all the prophets of Baal, the god of Jezebel’s people. The great gathering at Mount Carmel resulted in a miraculous sign of God’s power through fire, and Elijah slaying 450 prophets of Baal. Single handedly.
God’s name was vindicated and the people came back to God. And what Elijah prophesied would happen came to pass. The rain fell. What a great day.
Yet in the next chapter, Jezebel threatened to kill Elijah just like he killed her prophets, and Elijah essentially ran away scared. While under a juniper tree, Elijah asked God to take his life. How did this man of God, this mighty prophet, fall so quickly into despair? Elijah’s reaction to Jezebel’s threats didn’t make any sense after knowing everything that God had just done for and through Elijah. How did one idolatrous queen put him to flight?
But sometimes that’s the nature of despair. We can have every reason to hope on paper, but our emotions forsake us. The dark cloud of despair is not always predictable. And it’s poor judgment to consider moments of despair a character flaw. And it’s the epitome of arrogance to look down on others who have moments of hopelessness. They are not hopeless because they are bad people. Rather hopelessness comes because we live in a fallen world.
A Reason to Hope
What is essential is how we respond to despair. Does it overcome us or do we overcome it?
And that ultimately depends on what we choose to believe. The truth or the lie? The lie says whatever circumstances present themselves, be it threats from an idolatrous queen named Jezebel, the loss of a job, a bad diagnosis from the doctor…the lie says those circumstances are more powerful than God’s ability to do a miracle. The truth says that no matter what trials come our way, we have an Advocate who is able to do exceedingly and abundantly more than we can ever think or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20) And that miracle may come in the form of God delivering us from the circumstance immediately…by raising the widow’s son from the dead. Or it may come day by day, as the ravens fed Elijah by the brook.
However, the key to maintaining hope in the middle of the season of drought is first acknowledging that in this life, we will have trials. The Christian walk has resistance.
“Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you…” - I Peter 4:12
I think, well I know, I’ve struggled to grasp this. I’ve had the luxury of having rose colored glasses for most of my life. Many things have come easy to me. But I realize now that really the ease was God’s grace. He was shielding me from trials and tests that I was not ready to face yet. If I had faced them prematurely, I would have been overcome by them. But God in HIs lovingkindness has allowed only what He has allowed to sift through. He’s kept from many Elijah moments.
And the truth is, we may not see deliverance from those fiery trials until the new heaven and earth, where righteousness dwells and there will be no more tears, no more reason for hope or for despair because the reality of our faith is now standing right in front of us. That’s when Jesus’ response to His disciples’ question will have its ultimate fulfillment, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.” (John 9:3)
We have a promise that no matter what, God is doing His work in us. And that’s why we are told to:
“...rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” - I Peter 4:13
And while we look forward to the day with hopeful expectation, we have to be ready to give a reason for the hope that we have within us. (1 Peter 3:15)
Until then, we have hope, not in our own abilities or our emotional intelligence, and not in the good works that we do or the bad works we don’t do.
Our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. All other ground is sinking sand.
If our hope is Christ, we will not be disappointed. (Romans 5:5)
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