Dude, Where's your hope?

I have been thinking about hope lately. Thinking about the things that I hope for, and the things I should hope for. Hope is having this expectation or desire for something. One of my favorite movies is Shawshank Redemption. Near the end of the movie Andy writes a letter to Red and in the letter he says,

“Remember, Hope is a good thing, maybe even the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

The thing we need to realize is there are two types of hope. We have a worldly hope and we have a heavenly hope. Worldly hope is what I focus on most of the time. I hope I can get a Wii soon. I hope the Astros go to the World Series this year. I hope I can get a bigger house or car soon. What we have done with hope is turned it into a genie in a bottle type wish thing. I wish for this, that, or all of those. But for Christians we have a hope that has more to it than a wish.

When I was doing the Thessalonians study last month I saw this verse and thought about it for a while. “Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.” Now this verse is answering questions about Christians who have died, but I was thinking about the part of the verse that says “The rest of men, who have no hope.” Outside of Christ people have either no hope, or a false hope that anything will happen to them after they are dead. Outside of Christ the only hope someone can have is the wishful thinking hope of things they want to achieve or things they want to do on this Earth. And then it is all over in the end.

Thank God that we have a hope that is bigger than this. We have a hope that is not just wishful thinking but is an expectation in faith that something is going to happen. It can be a hope that we will be brought through a certain trial, or the hope that is focused on Heaven. I don’t just wish for these things, I long for them to happen and I am certain that they will happen because of my faith in Christ. It doesn’t mean all the pain will be taken away. It doesn’t mean that we won’t face problems, but it does mean that while we go through this life we will hold on to the hope that one day we will make it to the other side.

Listen to these words of Job

“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he will stand upon the Earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see him for myself. Yes I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!” Job 19: 25-27.

Job understood pain and sorrow far more than any of us, but he held onto his hope. So let us ask ourselves this. Are we living as the rest of the world without any hope? Do we only have wishful thinking to carry us through? If so we need to be encouraged in the promises of God. We need to remember that no matter what happens; in the end we will see our Redeemer! It is with that knowledge that we can make it through all things. Just like Job was, let us be overwhelmed at the thought!