Hope Revisited
Hope. I talk so much about it, but I’m afraid that at times I get hope confused with postponement. Maybe we all do. It seems like the Jews did in the New Testament. They hoped for the Messiah. They talked about the Messiah coming over and over again. They believed that things would be good when the Messiah came. And then the Messiah came. But it seemed like it was easier for them to believe that the Messiah was coming than He was here.
I often do that too. I think that someday it will get better. I have hope. Hope is what I will have in the future. But hope isn’t something that should be exclusively projected to the future. I don’t postpone happiness until a certain event happens or everything changes from the way it is now. The Messiah has come. Hope is here. I have now realized the goodness of God and can face my future with Him.
During this pandemic, many of us are living for COVID-19 to be over. We act like things won’t be good until it is over. But that is postponement not hope. Some of us want to wait until the coronavirus is over to see how things pan out before we make decisions about our future. But I’m so thankful for donors at CRF who didn’t stop giving until they saw the end of this mess. No, you have helped right in the middle of it all. Thank you.
I wear orange because it is the color of hope. I often tell orphaned children that I wear it because I expect there to be a cure for AIDS in the future. But perhaps I have postponed goodness to the future when in reality the Messiah has come. There is hope now whether there is a cure for AIDS or not. No matter what situation we face, even if it is negative, we have a Messiah. He is here. He provides help now. There is still hope whether a vaccine for COVID-19 comes or not.
But it is still hard to believe that the Messiah has come. It is easier to think it will be better in the future rather than to acknowledge that it is good now. When I go to the Jones Clinic in Kenya, I often teach a class to a bunch of women who have AIDS. I always end my class with the statement–“There is no cure for AIDS, but there is a cure for death.” Why? The Messiah has come. We don’t have to postpone our joy. We don’t have to postpone goodness to the future. The future has already been inaugurated. The Coming One is here now. The coming kingdom is present. Salvation is not only a future hope–it is also a present experience.
“There is no cure for AIDS, but there is a cure for death.”
At my last class, the women wanted to take a picture with me. I thought that they wouldn’t want their picture taken because of their dilemma. And when they had the photograph made, I hardly expected them to smile. But they smiled. I think they had hope written all across their faces. They believed that they had a future. And they believed that they had someone helping them as they moved forward to that future. And so do we.
