Hope in a hopeless world

"Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God." – Psalm 42: 5, 6

"When Earth’s last picture is painted," asked the brilliant writer Rudyard Kipling, "will it be a picture of the despair of hope?" I’m thinking of the desperate plea that came from a talented young woman in her mid-20s, a university graduate who is fluent in several languages. She wrote, "I don’t understand what’s going on inside me. I simply don’t have the desire to go on living. I’m emotionally exhausted. When I go to bed at night, I simply don’t want to wake up the next morning because everything will be the same, no changes inside and outside."

She’s not alone. Thousands and thousands of people today in every corner of the world are despairing of hope. Their numbers include businessmen whose corporate failures bring shame and disgrace; housewives who take refuge in the desensitization which alcohol brings; older people who have retired now say, "Is this all there is to life? Have I worked all my life only to end up with broken health, no friends, and nothing to live for?"

I call it the despair of hope. Has something catastrophic happened recently, something as pernicious as the radioactive fallout from Chernobyl that maimed and destroyed countless lives and scorched vegetation? It is a wind of despair touching the lives of some of our brightest, most promising men and women.

Difficult, tough situations are not new. I remember Victor Frankl’s writing about the importance of hope to those who were imprisoned during the horrors of the Holocaust in World War II. And long before him, I think of God’s children who, though placed in hopeless situations, kept their hope in God: Daniel in the den of lions, Esther facing the possibility of seeing her entire race destroyed, Paul imprisoned in Rome and facing possible execution–but still wrote, "Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice."

Abraham also faced difficult situations yet found hope. Paul, in writing about Abraham, said that he hoped against hope, holding on to the promise that God had given him, against what in the natural was an impossible situation.

I will never forget a conversation I once had with Deborah Wang, known as Auntie Wang to her friends and family. When I met her, she was in her 80s and as frail as a cornstalk in the wind. Her husband, Wang Ming Dao, had been one of the architects of the house church movement in the 1950s when China turned to Communism, and this little woman, who never lifted a finger to hurt anyone, was guilty by association. Subsequently, she spent 20 long years in prison, and during that time she saw her husband only three times.

Visiting this godly little woman in her tiny apartment in Shanghai, I got her to recount some of her experiences, and then asked, "Did you ever lose hope?" The answer which shone through her eyes spoke far, far louder than her soft words, "No, never!" Her eyes spoke volumes. They said, "Oh my child, if you only knew how close and precious Jesus was during those years, you would not have asked such a foolish question."

One thing these people have learned is that God is also the God of tough times, the dark days and the difficult circumstances. There is hope in a hopeless world. Have you learned that lesson?

Resource reading: Revelation 19:11-16

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