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The Weight of Our Hope
The seasons are a great example of our inability to know what is ahead based on what we see.
If the fruit of humanity is humility, then the fruit of humility is hopefulness. And hopefulness comes through the refining fires of waiting. For there to be hope, there needs to be something unseen to be hoped for.
“We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18).
“Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (Psalm 77:19).
The seasons are a great example of our inability to know what is ahead based on what we see. It is almost unfathomable to imagine a bare winter tree covered in lush green leaves. But this is why we don’t put our trust in trees, but we wait for the seasons to prepare the trees for the fruit and beauty we enjoy.
I love this quote from the end of the movie The Shawshank Redemption when the main characters, Andy and Red, are reunited. Red says, “I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.” It was what he had seen and what he had not yet seen that propelled Red’s heart toward hope. There was an infusion, a tension even.
This is the marriage of waiting and hope, which can feel like a super dysfunctional relationship at times. I want to be humble so that I can be hopeful, but by its very nature, being hopeful means I need to be humbled through the woes of waiting. How do I do that? Well, the answer is super complex, and it’s this: Don’t wait for anything other than the Lord.
We think of waiting as pacing the floor until the thing we ordered is delivered, until the problem we pray to see changed is transformed, or the event we want to see happen finally arrives. This is Amazon Prime Theology. It’s entitled, it’s transactional, it’s devoid of relationship. When the Amazon truck comes to deliver your package, you’re only excited to see the driver because of what he/she is delivering to you. The Bible doesn’t say wait for the what, it says wait for the who–
“I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” (Psalm 27:13-14)
“Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way, over the man who carries out evil devices!” (Psalm 37:5-7)
Hope stems from a desire for something that you can imagine but has not come to fruition. And that’s why “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12). We must locate the objects of our hope and collapse them into the Object of our hope. When we place our hope on things that can’t bear the weight of hope, our hope becomes fragile at best and fictional at worst. And the problem is that a fragile and fictional hope forces us into more-than-human activities in order to avoid failure and disappointment.
Only the Lord can bear the weight of our hope. When He is the object of our hope, the fulfillment of our desires doesn’t become irrelevant, they become reordered–
When the church plant barely grows …
When there are no baptisms …
When the ministry doesn’t progress …
When the child remains a prodigal …
When the illness doesn’t improve …
When the relationship isn’t restored …
When the financial troubles continue …
When the work doesn’t produce the results …
When the dream never materializes …
… my hope doesn’t collapse.
All of those above things matter to God because they matter to you. But in God’s economy, the question remains, “Will we seek Him to be the one to fill us up even if those other desires are never fulfilled?
The Psalmist gets down to the nitty gritty of what is necessary for God to become the only object of our hope.
“Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever “(Psalm 73:25-26).
There is “nothing on earth” he desires besides God. Is this hyperbole? Of course not. We can and should desire other good things, but they need to be contained within the greatest desire for God alone.
Because only He is able to bear the weight of our hope, and be the hope in our waiting.
