By: Pastor Al
When our children were small, we took fairly long trips in our 1980 Chevy station wagon. Each summer we traveled from our home in Montana to visit our families in Michigan. These were good times, but the youngest children lacked an appreciation for how long a trip of sixteen hundred miles would take. So, having driven for an hour or two, one of them would pipe up and plaintively ask, “Are we almost there?” We then tried to explain that it would still be a few more days, and so they must be patient and view the passing scenery, watch for deer and antelope, and enjoy the kids songs on the eight track tape player.
Like children, many of us are prone to ask in this time of “sheltering in place,” are we almost there? Are we soon at the point when we may move about freely and conduct the normal business of life? We may be asking this as we try to entertain ourselves with puzzles, games, phone calls, and Zoom meetings. How much longer must we wait? The need for the virtue of patience is sinking deeper and deeper into us.
In our last article we saw that one component of patience is faith. To persevere we have to strongly believe that our Heavenly Father is in sovereign control of all things and that He does care for us and will provide for us. His Word repeatedly assures us of that. And this kind of faith produces another key component of patience, and that is, hope.
“To persevere we have to strongly believe that our Heavenly Father is in sovereign control of all things.”
Don’t you love that word? Perhaps the worst of all human suffering is the anguish of hopelessness. The Apostle Paul reminded the Ephesian Christians what they once were in their pre-conversion state: “having no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). Truth be told, Christians are the only people who have genuine hope – hope that is truly hope.
Hope is often a word that is used loosely and doesn’t have much weight. We can say, I hope it will be sunny tomorrow. Or, I hope the Tigers will have a better year this year. Or, I hope the governor will soon lift the restrictions which she imposed on our lifestyle, and I hope that scientists will soon develop a vaccine for the Covid virus. Such hope is really no more than wishful thinking. It is weak, and its fulfillment is uncertain and unpredictable.
The truth is that we still live in a world which groans under the curse to which it was subjected because of sin. Multiple miseries abound as the consequence. And death is still the enemy which is lurking behind every illness and injury that we suffer. Death can never be outrun, even with the most stringent precautions. Therefore, our souls will have no abiding comfort even if Dr. Fauci would announce one day that a cure has been found for the Corona virus and our economy would be robust again. As pessimistic as this may sound, we cannot realistically expect life in this world to be problem free. It will always be riddled with suffering and hardship. Job’s diagnoses of the human condition still holds, “man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7)
“Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have the certainty of participating in a glorious victory over sin and death.”
Yet we have hope. It is a “blessed hope,” as Paul calls it in Titus 2:13. It is a unique, splendid hope, of which there is no other. It is the hope which God has given us in His Son. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have the certainty of participating in a glorious victory over sin and death, even the redemption of our now death-prone bodies. We are not there yet. We still may have a long way to go on this journey toward our joyous arrival home.
Paul says in Romans 8:24-25, “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” The day is coming, as the apostle writes, “When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’.” So now we may boldly stare death (and everything that causes death) in the face and say, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (I Cor. 15: 55, 57).
Victory over death is part of the glory which God promises those who are joined to Christ by faith and are waiting for His return when He will bring us to our new home in the restored creation. The apostle Peter, therefore, writes that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope. This hope is an essential component of patience. It casts its bright beams of light on all the shadows and darkness which we must pass through in this world, and it enables us to keep pressing on in our earthly journey.
This is the hope which has been the inspiration of many hymn writers. I am thinking of the man named Charles Albert Tindley, who was born in 1851 to slave parents. He knew the shadows and darkness at an early age. His mother died when he only four, and he was separated from his father at age five. But by the grace of God, he learned as a youth to patiently press on. By his own initiative he learned to read and write at age seventeen. He developed a voracious appetite for learning, went to night school while working as a janitor of a church. He took correspondence courses at a seminary and studied Greek and Hebrew to prepare himself for gospel ministry.
“Faith always sees a star of hope.”
During the course of serving several churches, he also used his exceptional gifts of music and hymn writing. He wrote over forty hymns, one of which is in our Lift Up Your Heart hymnal: “Beams of Heaven.”
I like the song because it speaks of the darkness in which we grope and yet “faith always sees a star of hope.” That sure hope explains much of Tindley’s long life of service, and it made him yearn for going home someday to experience all that God promised him in Christ.
I encourage you to carefully read Tindley’s tune, and may we share that yearning for celebrating our victory in the streets of glory – someday. Though we are not there yet, it will help us to be patient on our journey.
BEAMS OF HEAVEN
1 Beams of heaven, as I go through this wilderness below, guide my feet in peaceful ways, turn my midnights into days. When in the darkness I would grope, faith always sees a star of hope, and soon from all life's grief and danger I shall be free someday.
Refrain: I do not know how long 'twill be, nor what the future holds for me, but this I know: if Jesus leads me, I shall get home someday.
2 Oftentimes my sky is clear, joy abounds without a tear; though a day's so bright begun, clouds may hide tomorrow's sun.There'll be a day that's always bright, a day that never yields to night, and in its light the streets of glory I shall behold someday. [Refrain]
3 Burdens now may crush me down, disappointments all around, troubles speak in mournful sigh, sorrow through a tear stained eye. There is a world where pleasure reigns, no mourning soul shall roam its plains, and to that land of peace and glory I want to go someday. [Refrain]
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15: 13