What are the sources of hope in a world as broken as ours seems to be? We need no help to list the items quickly filling the huge in-tray of the world's crises that need attending to. We have 24/7 news, online and off, as the background music of life as it is these days. We know enough, and have seen more than enough.
Someone said the other day they were sick of hearing about the world's problems. I know what they meant, and mean. There is a sickness brought on by exposure to more anxiety, fear, sadness and anger than the human mind and heart can comfortably process, manage, or cope with.
Despair is not a Christian disposition, but it certainly is a human experience, and can sometimes become a cultural mood that depresses and distresses whole communities. As a Christian I'm not immune to the same sickness, the sense of being overwhelmed by circumstances and events I can neither control nor cure.
But. As a Christian I believe in a God who has no intention of abandoning the world, or us humans, to our own devices. One night in Bethlehem, one afternoon on Calvary and one early morning in a garden, God lifted up this broken world, enfolded it in love, and promised creation's future.
This is a world where cruelty and tragedy, hatred and corruption, greed and injustice, conspired to silence the voice of God and extinguish the light of God, and negate the love of God. But the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us; the light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not extinguish it - death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.
So, then. What are the sources of hope in a world as broken as ours seems to be? There is an element of defiance in Christian hope, a defiance of despair. Faith this side of the resurrection is faith in the God of hope. These words of Walter Brueggemann were written 30 years ago. My coy of the book is, in booksellers' terms, disbound. Cracked, multiple loose pages, a loose leaf folder of a book. Texts Under Negotiation. The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Augsburg Fortress, 1993)
"Hope, the conviction that God will bring things to full, glorious completion, is not an explanation of anything. Indeed, biblical hope most often has little suggestion about how to get from here to there. It is rather an exultant, celebrative conviction that God will not quit until God has had God's way in the world.
Hope is an act that cedes our existence over to God, in the trusting assurance that God is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all that we can think or imagine' (Eph.3.20)
As with creation, so consummation as a faith affirmation is essentially an act of doxology, which takes its assurance not from anything observable, but from God's own character that issues in God's own promises. Thus I propose that an evangelical infrastructure requires the regular voicing of the most extravagant and outrageous promises of God." (pages 40-41)
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