Hope

 January 29, 2021

I’ve been thinking recently about hope. Not hope as in “I hope the Bills win the playoffs.” That hope is a bit late, and dependent on factors no one, not even the Bills could control. I’m thinking of hope as the Bible describes it in Hebrews 6:19—“an anchor for the soul.” Our hope is independent of circumstances, wholly dependent on the faithfulness of God. 

People often criticize Christians for their hope. They say it’s a “pie in the sky bye and bye” faith that doesn’t touch down here and now. I disagree. It very much lives in this world. John Piper put it this way: “It’s Object is in the future; It’s experience is in the present.” Let me illustrate, but with something quite dependent upon matters outside of my control.

I keep bees. Years ago, a gentleman in my church introduced me to this fascinating hobby, Sadly, my colonies died one spring some twenty years ago, and I gave it up; but last summer, I decided it was time to get back into it. Right now I have three colonies in the side yard. In the winter, honeybees cluster around the queen, keeping her warm and ready to resume egg laying, usually sometime in February. If all goes well, by April, the colony is exploding in numbers, but it’s a critical time for them. If they run out of honey stores or can’t get to what’s in the hive, they will starve, often only inches from the life-giving food they need. 

In the fall, I inspected the colonies, made sure they had enough stores for the winter, closed them up, and waited. In hope. I made preparations in October with April in mind. Now that I’ve finished our laundry room, I’ll be assembling frames for them to build comb on in the spring. Everything I did in the fall, and everything I do from now until April, is done in hope that they will be alive and ready to start bringing in nectar in the spring. Hope prompted me to do things beforehand; my eye on the future guided my hands in the present.

In an even greater sense, the Christian’s hope of eternal life is what motivates our actions today. If there is no future, no heaven (and hell), why bother with the hard work of loving others, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, caring for the sick? Of course, doing so is admirable, but human nature what it is, we soon let up our pace, flag in our zeal, and start looking out for Number One. Hope keeps my eyes off myself and on Jesus Christ, the Object of my hope that motivates me here and now. Hopefully, in the spring, my hives will be bursting with buzzing—a hope conditioned upon factors I cannot control. My hope in Jesus is secure, because nothing is outside his control, for which I am thankful tonight.