Living Faith 10.4 – 10.7
Hope is something that everyone has experienced. Most of us use the language of hope in our daily interactions when we talk about our lives and those of our loved ones and our world. We hope for our children and their future. We hope for a good result in diagnostic tests. We hope for responsible government in which provision is made for all. Of course, we also use the language of hope in less lofty ways. We hope that the Canucks or Ti – cats will win. We hope the meeting will be short.
In Living Faith, hope is framed by God’s coming in the past, the present and especially the future—God’s coming both to the world and to the lives of those who believe. When reading Living Faith 10.4 – 10.7, however, I can’t help but wonder how these words relate to actual living faith, to faith that is alive and vibrant in the day – to – dayness of the believer’s life, here and now? In many ways it seems so lofty, so distant, so large in scale, so elevated to an eternal dimension, it is hard to imagine what it means for faith lived amidst the mediocre moments of daily life.
Certainly, when spoken into contexts of extremity—at the deathbed of a loved one, in the midst of war, natural disaster or following a terminal diagnosis, these poignant words and imagery embed the tragic moments of life within the much larger whole of God’s story, feeding hope in the face of human finitude. “Eternal Life is resurrection life. As God raised Christ, so shall we be raised … In death we commit our future confidently to God.” Existential terror is addressed in the assurance of being made one with Christ in baptism and in entrusting our future to God. We need fear nothing. Hope lives here.
Thankfully most of our lives are not spent in moments of extremity. How can we hear these words of hope spoken into the rhythm, routine and present tense of our daily lives? Indeed, I believe that the lofty, extravagant biblical imagery is actually intended to disrupt us—disrupt us from the indifference and humdrum that so often characterizes existence in the modern world, disrupt us from all that blinds us to God’s hidden presence and possibility in life.
We may see no connection between God’s story and our stories of waiting at the dentist’s office, washing dishes or picking dandelions but Living Faith beckons us in this direction. We are challenged to recognize the extraordinary in the ordinary, to discover the holy and sacred in the mundane. Indeed, now we see in part, then we shall see face to face and the meaning of everything will be fully revealed. Even the most ordinary aspects of life have a place in God’s story. Hope lives here.
The many images of future fulfillment in God remind us that hope in the present tense is most often lived as trust; trust in God who is the beginning and the end. This is the kind of hope required amidst the small stresses and worries that press in upon us in our daily lives—worry about the things we need to accomplish, worry about our world, worry about loved ones, worry about worry. Living Faith calls us to re – imagine and align ourselves with God in trust. When we are overwhelmed with worry this kind of hope urges us to let go of those things about which we can do nothing and to entrust them to God. This is a call to surrender our need to be in control and a call to respond to the fullness of God’s possibility in our lives. Hope lives here.
Central to ancient understandings of faith is the affirmation, “Believe, so that you may know.” In our world, belief requires theological imagination that dares to see God’s hope, God’s eternity, God’s reign, revealing itself in time: past, present and future. Some may consider the priority of belief in hope to be naive and wishful thinking. But ours is a confessional faith that starts with belief inspired by grace. Belief is the beginning of hope and of claiming a theological imagination for which our world, our church and our lives desperately yearn. Theological imagination that dares to dream dreams and see visions might yet give us eyes to see ever more fully God’s hidden presence and possibility, even here, even now. Come, Lord Jesus.
May the God of hope fill us with joy and peace in believing so that by the power of the Holy Spirit we abound in hope!
