Several months ago I wrote a blog post on bravery entitled An Immaterial Breeze. In it, I mentioned Paul’s trio of things that remain – Faith, Hope, and Love. I remember thinking at the time that Faith and Love have received their fair share of consideration over the years, but that Hope had not, at least not hope in the biblical sense of the word. In this post, I will explore what the Bible means by hope and how this biblical sense is not the wishful, tenuous thinking with which that word is so often associated in our modern parlance. And I will show that it’s not only the word of God that teaches us this particular definition of hope but creation itself. In the process, it will become evident that the pessimist has no foundation for his gloomy forecasts, but that, on the contrary, he is born into a world in which biblical hope is taught as the regular rhythm of his existence.
George F. Will once wrote, “The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.” But the problem with the pessimist is that he fails to notice how often he is pleasantly surprised and only tallies up the relatively rare occasions when he’s right. Day after day he is met with a stream of routine faithfulness, meant to train him to expect the good, but he refuses to notice the kind accumulation of these examples and persists in waiting for ruin. We all know these Eeyores, legal experts in Murphy’s Law. Indeed, we may even be one ourselves. But if we are, it’s not that the world around us is teaching us to think this way. Consider the following.
Because our world spins on its axis and circles the sun at set intervals, we have come to expect things like sunrises and seasons. When the sun goes down each day we do not doubt that it will rise again tomorrow. When we inhale the icy wind of February we know that we are one breath closer to Spring. The movement of the earth through the heavens is so regular and precise that astronomers can tell us when the next solar or lunar eclipse will be down to the very hour and second, even though it is months or even years away. These are all lessons in biblical hope. We are being taught the assurance of future things. In Scripture, faith and hope are inextricably linked. “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1) Faith says that the unseen God is here now and that He is good. Hope eagerly expects to find that true over and over again, no matter how many times our globe circles the sun.
Or consider the labor of the farmer. He doesn’t plant his seeds with anxiety but he does so with biblical hope, knowing that a harvest will surely come. And God even links the surety of His kingdom to this agricultural reality (Mark 4:26-29) He means for those rows of swaying grain to engender solid confidence in His people that His reign is just as certain. Or what baker does not know the dough will rise when once the yeast has been inserted? This, too, is tied to God’s kingdom in Scripture, (Matt. 13:33) that we might come to expect its sure expansion. Or consider rivers and waterfalls. What you behold one moment is not what you are looking at a second later. Those molecules of water are way downstream by now. They have been replaced so seamlessly that you didn’t even notice you were waiting for new ones. All these are examples of what the Bible means by hope. Not a nervous yearning for what may or may not arrive, but a certain expectation of goodness on the way.
When Scripture says that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” (Heb. 13:8) it is only echoing what we have experienced all our lives in the world around us. And why is this? Because the world around us is held together by that same Jesus Christ! (Col. 1:17) The “laws of nature” are nothing but the faithfulness of God in action. And Scripture also teaches that the Creator Himself is the God of Hope (Rom. 15:13), Who has implanted a hopeful yearning in creation itself. The One who “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matt. 5:45) gives no substantiation to the doubter’s dreary predictions. No, the optimist has far more evidence to rest upon. Are there draughts that wreck our crops? Is there yeast that’s lost its strength? Do rivers sometimes run dry? Sure they do, but these are exceptions to the rules and not the ordinary course of things. If God so faithfully educates His enemies in the regularity of His kindness through His creation, how much more so should we, His children, have warrant for an inextinguishable hope, through His great and precious promises!
But if hope is only needed for what we do not see (Rom. 8:24), how is it that Paul says hope will remain into the endless days of eternity, when what was hidden from our eyes will be finally seen? Because our God is an endless fountain of delight! We will never cease waiting for more glory. Like that river that was new each moment that we looked upon it, so our God will be a river of Life whom we will both have and never cease expecting. So just as creation groans, not with the whines of complaint, but with the pains of child-birth, pregnant with the promises of coming joy, let your heart ache with the certain yearning of true hope. His promises are as sure as the sunrise tomorrow!
