I read this piece from the L.A. Times tonight, and it made me sad. What really struck me was the final paragraph:
Clearly, I saw now that belief in God, no matter how grounded, requires at some point a leap of faith. Either you have the gift of faith or you don't. It's not a choice. It can't be willed into existence. And there's no faking it if you're honest about the state of your soul.
How could someone who started off so strong for God find themselves in that conclusion? Why does faith seem so fragile sometimes?
I think that "faith" isn't really the issue, it's hope. Hope is what is so easily broken. Hope is the thing that cynics lack, that the desperate are desperate for, the very thing we hold out for. It's often our last line of defense against a world that is broken and bruised, often leaving us black and blue in the process.
I'm developing a sermon thought, still in its very early stages at this point, along these lines: supposing Christ's mission in this world centered around hope. As his followers, shouldn't that be ours as well? And if so, what are we doing to create and develop hope in others? I think we normally see hope as some abstract, wait-and-see kind of thing. Yet, the hope that Christ showed never stuttered, never became passive, but moved.
What if we, as followers, became hope? Hope pointing the way to our source of hope, Christ. Promises delivered by the promised deliverer. Seems to me that there would be few reasons to lose it to begin with.
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I think life has a way of covering up hope in people's lives to a point where they just throw up their hands and say "what's the point." The deep burdens and scars that life seems to attach to all of us makes the writers viewpoint easy to understand and sometimes easy to relate too.
ReplyDeleteBut your point here is excellent. Even when our faith is lacking or we just can't find it, we can still have hope. We can't see it or feel it most of the time, but it doesn't mean it's not there. And as believers, we are called to take our hope one step further by giving it away.
Personally, the last week or so has been a great lesson to me. When life trys to steal your hope through hard times, do something for someone else no matter how little or big it might be. Then, you will find hope all over again. Then you will be living what a life in Christ is intended to be.
When I was reading Soul Cravings this morning, the word HOPE just stuck with me through the second part of the chapter on "Destiny". "Hope is the fuel through which we create the future. When you give up on hope, you become paralyzed in the present and begin to live in the past." When you have hope, that's when you begin to realize what having a sense of "destiny" really is.
ReplyDeleteI think as human beings, having plans for a future, hope for tomorrow, a destiny we are trying to reach for, well that empowers us to move forward and not live in the past. God created us to have passion, desire and emotion (got that from SC too)so when we do things for others, hang on to hope and live each day for others around us, that is when we experience that euphoric high which I cannot even put into words. Maybe those feelings, those emotions are one of God's precious gifts he gives to us .
Anyway, I know I tend to babble when I really just wanted to say GREAT GREAT GREAT POST! Loved this one!