Hopeless Without God
For most of us hope means “I hope so,” or “It would be nice if,” or “I don’t really know, but I’m hoping, maybe…” But in the Bible, when someone says that our hope is based in God or Jesus, it means that something sure and certain is on the way, even though we can’t see it yet.
As Christians, it might be better if we simply abandoned the use of the word “hope” and chose some other word when referring to our security or our ultimate destiny. It needs to reflect that when we express hope for something the entire subject is God-centered, not human-centered. If we take a human point of view, the best we’re ever going to do is…hope so!
When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around, sang The Police a while back, reflecting what Science tells us daily. Everything on earth is in a process of running down, always moving toward disorder and less energy, like a clock that was once wound up tight, but is slowly winding down. So the hope of something much better tomorrow than we have today goes against the grain of what we know about the world.
Many of us learn through our daily experiences that on our own, without God’s help, life in general just moves toward less and less hope, finally ending in the ultimate hope-crusher — death!
But thankfully for us, our hopes for the future aren’t based upon the natural trend of things, but upon the great, creative power of God that’s as potent today, and will be tomorrow, as it was at the beginning of life.
Our hope is based on the Hebrew view of history, the idea that only because God is involved in history he can make tomorrow better by his own creative power. Our tomorrows can be better than today due to God’s master plan for our lives. The Hebrews didn’t believe that things somehow just got better by and by, but rather that God makes things better just because he chooses to bless, protect, and prosper his people.
That’s one reason why we have a very thick (dust-covered) book called the Bible, to record all the things God did to prove to his people that he meant what he said. He gave them reasons to believe in a better tomorrow.
So let’s be sure about one thing from the start: our hopes are based not upon the general progress of the world, but upon God’s faithfulness and promise-keeping power. As such, they are as sure as his steadfast, trustworthy character. If we haven’t already done so, let’s dust off the Old Book and refamiliarize ourselves with his great promises.
