Hope of the Hopeless

For a couple people out there, that I know of, it's midnight no matter what the hour may be: it is a midnight of the soul.  These people have set their hope on something, some goal, some love, some reconciliation, some coming-together.  But looking from the outside, from the world's perspective, these people hope in something impossible: the goal cannot be achieved, the love is irretrievably lost, the parties cannot be reconciled, the things that must be brought together are like repelling magnets that can never be made to touch.  In other words, these people are idiots.

To me, though, they are the noblest of idiots, who in their unshakably stupid refusal to realize when it's time to let go show that they know something more than the greatest philosophers and geniuses of our age.  They know that some things are worth holding on to.  They are the wisest, then, of all, for they know the true value of what we discard and give up as lost.

These noble, wisest idiots are not alone.  They come from a long and proud line.  All of mankind's greatest stories feature at least one of such person.



Further, there is a name for this brand of terrifically wise lunacy.  It is called faith.  "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen," says the Bible in Hebrews 11:1.  Thereafter, it lists off the people who had this kind of faith, this hopless hope.  There was Abel who hoped to please the  God who made all things when all he had to offer was a lamb.  There was Enoch who hoped to be in the presense of the God whose face no one can see and live without facing the death that comes to all mankind.  There was Noah who prepared for a truly apocalyptic rainstorm on a world where rain had never before fallen.  There was Abraham who wandered as a stranger in a land God had promised to give to him and his descendents, and never possessed any more (nor did his descendents, for several hundred years after him) of it than a small plot on which to bury his dead.  There was his wife, Sarah: a woman who was barren even in her younger days and yet hoped for a son well past the onset of menopause.  When she finally did have this son, Abraham, in obedience to the voice of God, prepared to kill his son in ritual sacrifice, hoping that somehow God would still provide heirs through the son he was about to slay.  There was that same son, Isaac, as an old man with no lands or noteworthy possessions who hoped his two sons would inherit great kingdoms and blessed them accordingly.  Then there was one of those sons, Jacob, who hoped the same of his offspring, even though they lived as strangers in a foreign land that would later enslave them.  And one of his sons, not to be beaten, hoped to be buried in a land neither he nor several generations of his descendants would ever be able to visit, much less possess.  Then there was another family, who gave birth to Moses and hoped to give their child a good life, though the government hunted him to kill him from the moment he was born.  Then Moses himself hoped doubly for two impossible things: to have a life better than that of a prince of Egypt by forsaking the title and living as one among many slaves, and to find a way to free an oppressed people from the most powerful dictatorship of the time by wandering around in the desert tending goats.  When he led these people, they all had such impossible hopes: they hoped that some unseen power would decimate the populace of the most advanced civilization of their time--and yet somehow spare them because of a little blood on their doorways--, and also hoped that they could cross an impassible body of water on foot in order to escape a pursuing army.  Their leader Joshua hoped to demolish the walls of one of the most heavily fortified cities in ancient Palestine by parading silently around them for a week.  One of the inhabitants of that same city, Rahab, hoped that somehow this plan would succeed and that she would somehow survive the ensuing ethnic clensing--and not get killed by her own people as a traitor in the meantime.  There is a truly great crowd of people who have come before us and held on to hopeless hopes.

If we are Christians, we stand among them, for the Bible says that this hopeless hope is the very same faith that saves all who profess the name of Christ: "For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Romans 8:24-25).  Jesus Christ Himself had this hope.  He hoped to save condemned sinners from their just punishment at the hands of an omnipotent Judge.  He hoped to love and be loved forever by the enemies who hated and killed Him.  I confess that I myself am one of these people: I hope to be reconciled with one who has disdained to speak to me, I hope for the love of a woman who literally has not spoken to me in a year, and I hope to see fulfilled promises made to both her and me through a situation that looks tailor-made for breaking both the promises and those of us foolish enough hold on to them--and these are the temporal things I hope for, the eternal things I hope for are so wild I dare not confess them here...but I hope for them.

The great thing about our God is that He is a God of those who step out or stand strong in faith--of all those who hold to hopeless hope in His name.  He never leads them astray, He never lets them down, and He is proud of them.  He rewards their hopeless hope with impossible solutions.  He gave Abel His pleasure.  He took up Enoch without death.  He saved Noah and his family by the flood.  He gave the land to Abraham and his descendants, and they possess it to this day.  He gave Sarah a son, so that he might have descendants at all.  He sent an angel to stay Abraham's knife at the last possible moment.  He fulfilled the blessings Isaac gave Esau and Jacob, and made great nations of both of them.  He fulfilled the blessings of Jacob to his sons by making them the twelve tribes of Israel.  He saw to it that Joseph was buried in the Promised Land.  He gave Moses a name and a reward greater than that of any prince of Egypt.  He also gave him direction and purpose from a miraculous meeting in the trackless wilderness.  He killed all the firstborn of Egypt, but spared every household that had kept the Passover.  He parted the Red Sea, and drowned the army in it when they tried to follow.  He brought down the walls of Jericho.  He preserved Rahab and immortalized her in the genealogy of the kings of Israel, and of Christ Himself (Matthew 1:5).  He made salvation available in Jesus Christ.  He drew men and women from all races and all walks of life to give their hearts to Christ forever.  He raised Christ from the dead and in the future shall conquer death itself forever.  Our God is the hope of the hopeless, and I am proud to be one of His.