Is Hope For Fools?
“And hope does not put us to shame...”
The dialogues and debates around the meaning of suffering are ancient and can keep us in an unforgiving loop of questions without answers. While sitting in questions, for a time, can be a healthy practice, if we are asking the wrong questions about suffering, we may begin to feel the telltale signs of madness. Anyone who has known significant suffering has also known the jarring pain of being given answers. They may be told to find the beauty and the good in their suffering. What the…what the? The misapplied verses feel like bracingly cold water. Every well meaning piece of advice is another reminder that you are being pushed further into isolation.
In order to stay sane, I don’t think the question is about suffering at all. It is hope. Brutal honesty will declare that on this side of the river suffering will not end. But hope. Will we have hope? When everything in us, everything in a cynical world, and the mocking voice of our enemy tells us that hope is futile, can we hold out hope? In a bleak and barren landscape, hope feels ridiculous, simplistic, impotent. Hope in the face of cruel suffering might only lead to a deeper disappointment. Soulsick. Heartsick. (Proverbs 13:12)
Hope has been elusive lately which is why the last book I wanted to read was The Road by Cormac MacCarthy. A classic postapocalyptic tale of a father and son desperately trying to survive after much of the human race has died or plummeted into the most foul versions of themselves. As a masterful pain avoider, I had decided long ago to not read but after being persuaded by two readers whom I trust deeply, I found myself trudging into the text.
The wincing and deep sighing at a world that is scarred and black without a blue sky or blue ocean is what I expected. But what I did not expect was a profoundly stunning lesson on hope. The relentless hope of the son in The Road is shocking but viscerally authentic at the same time. Ridiculous, irrational hope. Even his father remains mystified by it. It is evident by all that the son has witnessed that it is not a blind, naive hope. He stops and weeps. He quakes with fear at times. But he rests, reorients himself, and chooses hope over and over again.
The gift of The Road was the welcome truth that hope in suffering is not for suckers. It is the choice that the Father runs to every time we make it. “I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame.” Psalm 34:4-5. The enemy of our souls wants us to only see the warped black road that our lives could potentially be. Don’t bother, he says. But when we say no! When we defy the lies just like Puddleglum in C.S Lewis’s The Silver Chair and have the courage to appear the fool and push in all the chips, betting on Christ, we will be met with Him.
The most breathtaking moments for a Christ Follower are when a fellow believer chooses hope in the face of untold horror. We watch them in the boxing ring, pummeled and gasping on the mat. Will they get up? They are destroyed and silently weeping. What is going to happen? And then, against all reason, they stir.
They lost their child. I watched them. The enemy’s presence was palpable at the funeral. But they chose to hope in Jesus. Despite the disorienting reality of a beautiful three-year old inexplicably dying, hundreds of God’s people stood on shaking legs and sang hymns of comfort back to the parents who watched, weeping yet radiant.
He lost his wife tragically too young. We were all down. But he went to church and chose to receive comfort from a pastor who would sit and weep with him. When it came, his hope was fragile, barely breathing but the power in that hope made the rest of us stand up and pray, fighting for his life to be restored. We cried out to God that he would know joy again. His tenuous hope fuelled ours and we got to work.
In these moments the only truth that rises above all else is the resurrection of our Saviour. The foolishness of the cross makes all other attempts of this lonely world and cruel enemy seem utterly ridiculous. And this hope does not disappoint or put us to shame (Romans 5:5) but hope like this is also not held in isolation.
Hope is held in community. When we whisper out a prayer request that is breaking our hearts, the kind of request where we can't make eye contact with our brother or sister in Christ in case their kind eyes make us start crying, we are asking for hope. Hope that something can shift. Hope that we won’t forsake the God of our youth. Hope that we will not abandon our faith.
Lying in bed recently and weeping over an uncertain future, I admit to my husband that I am losing hope. In fact that is what I am grieving, not the uncertain future. He whispers into the dark that it’s ok. Hope is for the downcast and the brokenhearted, he says.
Yes. The Father’s urging for us to remain hopeful in suffering is the reminder that He is near. Beauty beyond all things, the God who became human weeps with us. Intercedes for us. Welcomes us to come, not just into His presence but to curl up onto His lap. Beauty that makes your heart ache as He whispers that you are not foolish for hoping in Him. No shame. Only a face filled with radiant peace. Until tomorrow when we start all over.
