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In the wake of Hurricane Helene, I write amid the sound of blaring sirens, whining chainsaws, and humming generators. Yesterday in the raging dawn, live power lines burned in our yard, trees fell, our basement flooded, and my wife, Debbie, had a moment of despair. But after we finished bailing water out bucket by bucket, she took hold of the situation and embraced it. With a drop cord plugged into a neighbor’s generator, she made coffee (which made me more hopeful) and put soup on to heat in the slow cooker. Her contagious hopefulness didn’t stop the storm, restore power, or raise fallen trees, but it did brighten a dark day. Her hopefulness became helpfulness as she extended coffee and soup to the neighbors on our storm-battered street.
Where did such hope come from? I’ve seen Debbie’s hopefulness grow over the years of my cancer journey. It’s a daily hope that comes from knowing that God is with her and in control even when—especially when—we’re not in control (which is actually all the time). Seeing Debbie take hold of hope and joy (although sometimes mixed with tears) reminded me of the passage in Proverbs 31. Speaking of the virtuous woman, it says, “She laughs at the times to come” (v. 25). What kind of person can laugh at the times to come? Someone who is filled with hope—a real, solid, God’s-got-this, confident expectation for ultimate and lasting good.
The New Testament word for hope is a general one that can be used as we commonly use the term, too. For example, a few weeks ago during the summer’s drought, I often said, “I hope it rains.” But today, as dark clouds gather over the flooded ruins left by the hurricane, I’m saying, “I hope it doesn’t rain!” This is the normal sense in which we use the word hope—a desire for some future good. But as with my rain example, our hopes are more like wishes, and they change like the weather.
That’s not to say that such hope is useless—not at all. Having a desire for good that might or might not come is the way that God has wired all of us. It is healthy for us to be hopeful in our everyday lives, and such hope is a gift of common grace. It’s this hope that helps us plant gardens, build houses, stock shelves, follow a recipe, read a book, and teach a child. Yet this hope is frequently bruised by disappointment—sometimes even despair. A canceled flight, a broken promise, or a doctor’s saying “It’s cancer” can crush our hopes and upend our plans for a day—or even a lifetime. Such are the vicissitudes of life. As O. Henry put it in his brilliant telling of “The Gift of the Magi,” “Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”
But there is a hope that goes beyond wishes, beyond the horizons of our broken world. That hope is in Christ and from Christ and for Christ. It is a certain and lasting hope that is bound up not in our circumstances but in a person whose name is Faithful and True (see Rev. 19:11). Because of Christ’s sovereign, saving work, His people have a hope that is a sure and steadfast anchor for the soul (Heb. 6:19). A hope that is certain and steadying is not a hope of our own making—rather, it is a hope that Jesus made secure by His death, burial, and resurrection. As the old hymn says:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
And just as the cross and resurrection are at the heart of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1–4), they are also at the heart of the Christian’s hope. See how Paul addresses this in 1 Corinthians 15:16–20:
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
“He is risen” are the three words that change everything. For if hope is an expectation for future good, then the hope of the resurrection is the ultimate future good. But it provides the ultimate present good as well because our hope is not only the hope of heaven, one that’s good only after we are dead. Not only do we die in hope, but we live in hope, too. As the Apostle Peter wrote:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)
If we are in Christ, we are always living in hope, and the complete fulfillment of that hope will be when our faith becomes sight, when we see Him who “loved us and gave himself up for us” (Eph. 5:2).
Among the most precious promises that anchor a Christian’s hope in the present is Jesus’ parting promise before His ascension: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). That means that Jesus is with us in all kinds of days—both in weakness and in power, in happiness and in hurricanes—and He promises to be with us every day until the end of all days. It’s important to remember that Jesus made this promise after His resurrection, so the promise is good on both sides of the grave. Our hope in Christ is secure, for we are held by the Shepherd with scars in His hands. This certain hope cannot be taken away from us, but pain and tears can obscure our sight, and storms of fear and doubt often shake our world.
In Hebrews, the Christians who first read that letter had some shining days even in the midst of intense suffering:
But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. (Heb. 10:32–34)
Their hope in Christ was so clear that despite the loss of their possessions and reputations, they found joy. They “laugh[ed] at the times to come” because they could see beyond to the promises. But they had grown weary, as one hard day stumbled into the next, and so the preacher writing this letter reminded them to keep at it because Jesus is worth it. He urged them to renew their hope and build endurance by remembering God’s stunning record of keeping His promises—from the moment they were saved and throughout all generations (10:32–12:1)—and to refocus on Christ, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (12:2).
All of us have stood in the sandals of our first-century brothers and sisters. We, too, need endurance. We need to rehearse our hope through prayer and song, through the Word, and through the fellowship of the saints. John Piper recalled how he struggled with discouragement in his first year as pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. The young pastor was like the psalmist in Psalms 42 and 43 who asked the same question three times: “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me?” Piper got hold of those dark moments by “preaching to himself” before he preached to others. Inspired by these psalms, he answered the question with the same answer that the psalmist did: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Ps. 42:11). And so Piper had a large sign placed on the side of the church that he could see when he walked from his house to the church. It simply said: “Hope in God!” He said that folks in the neighborhood started calling it the “Hope-in-God Church.” That’s a good thing to be known as.
The hope that Christ brings is as real and near as He is. So our hope is as lasting and sure as our Savior and holds so much promise beyond this wasting-away world that we can laugh at the times to come.