by Dr. Jeff Mathis
It is far easier to despair than to hope.
Despair is the low-water mark of engagement. It is cynicism with a double dose of doom. Despair is a pitch-dark room with no promise of dawn, a match, or a light switch.
Our last few years were marked with long stretches where we sipped from the cup of despair like bitter coffee. The reasons for our despair were (and are) many, but they all point to the decline and desolation of institutions, systems, and relationships that we have depended upon for purpose and joy. Recalling these sorrow-filled headlines and their demoralizing implications makes it easy to see why so many of us have lost faith that things could ever improve. Despair and grief are intimately linked. Instead of the hope of resurrection, Despair sees only a grave.
If hope means it won’t always feel the way it does now, then despair is its kissing cousin. With despair, it, too, believes that it won’t always feel the way it does now. Indeed, despair espouses that it will feel much, much worse.
Despair is more than just a state of mind or a depressive outlook. Despair erodes confidence and crushes the need to put forth any effort.
Charlie Chaplin said it well: “Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.”
As followers of Jesus who wish to be his disciples, we have reason to hope. But more than that, with God as Emmanuel—God With Us—in the person of Jesus, we are commissioned to be agents of hope.
Our consumeristic climate can make it challenging to see the Advent and Christmas Seasons as anything but a gift from God to us. That is, God gives us hope for a glorious future. God gives us peace in Christ Jesus. God gives us joy in knowing that we belong to a God who loves and saves us.
God gives us.
But what if we consider Advent and Christmas more than some divine economy and pivot to how our relationship as Christ’s disciples calls us to offer hope, peace, joy, and love to others?
God gives to us so that we know how to give to others.
Reframing this season suggests a posture of activity rather than passivity. And in a world of darkness and despair, disciples of Jesus become ambassadors of hope.
What does it look like to be a people of hope? Here are a few observations:
Hope doesn’t mean denial.
The hope God gives us in Jesus is that God’s love will win in the end. It does not mean that there will not be losses along the way. Purveyors of hope do not traffic in false hope, nor do they look at disappointment, heartache, and decline and call them delusions.
Hope takes reality seriously.
Hope doesn’t mean sitting around waiting for things to get better or rebound on their own. Hope recognizes that changes and adaptations are necessary and that we must pivot and work together for the new future God wants us to embrace.
Hope listens.
Hope doesn’t drown out despair. It transforms it. When we sit with others who see no future for themselves, we can give them hope because we see hope in them. They are not hopeless but have value and promise in what God is already doing to redeem and birth a new beginning.
Hope trusts.
The hope the prophets gave to God’s people had a gestational period of hundreds of years. Over the last twenty-one centuries, church history has taught us that there are natural ebbs and flows to God’s work in the world. Paul describes hope best when he says that “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:38-39).”
Hope means action.
Because we are a people of hope, we are called to get to work giving hope to others. We love our neighbors when we practice hope. Instead of hoarding God’s hope to us in Christ Jesus and sitting on the sidelines of the world knowing that God will win in the end, hope calls us to give other people hope in a hopeless time. Hope means “Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with God (Micah 6:8).”
First Baptist Church, you give me hope in the resiliency you have demonstrated through a tough stretch of highway. When we walked through the valley of the shadow of death with poise, patience, and abounding love for one another, you set the stage for God to renew the darkness that seems to reign supreme.
Here’s the Good News that we will ground our hope: The darkness does not, in fact, reign supreme.
Thanks be to God.