Our One Fixed Hope!

            I can’t forget words I heard the late black evangelist G. P. Holt declare in a sermon nearly 40 years ago as he preached about the gap between human understanding and God’s ability. He said, "I don’t see how a black cow eats green grass and gives white milk that makes yellow butter. But she does it, and I like it." Amen to all that, Brother Holt! How ridiculous is the notion that a finite human brain should be able to "see how" and fully understand all the ways and doings of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God. Centuries before Christ, a psalm attributed to David declared, "Lord, my heart is not haughty, Nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, Nor with things too profound for me" (Psalm 131:1). Why should we be surprised some of God’s ways are beyond complete human understanding? After all, the average adult human brain weighs in at about three pounds. Meanwhile, God is declared to be "mighty in power; His understanding is infinite" (Psalm 147:5b). The prophet Jeremiah told God in a prayer in Jeremiah 32:17, ". . . .There is nothing too difficult for You." and when the angel Gabriel told the virgin Mary she would be pregnant with Jesus, she said, "How can this be, since I do not know a man" (that is, "since I am a virgin?") – and Gabriel answered, "With God nothing will be impossible" (Luke 1:34-37).

Think about another thing we struggle mightily to understand – "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). That verse comes in the middle of teaching about "suffering, groaning, pain, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword" (Romans 8:17-36) – some of which the apostle Paul makes clear we all encounter in life. Question is, where is God when we undergo any of that? Where is the good when we suffer? Our human predicament can be likened to a very nearsighted person inching along a complex mural painted on a long wall. We see enough to know it is a great work of art, but we cannot clearly see the entire thing. We see some of this and some of that, but cannot see how it all fits together. We do not, as it is said, "see the whole picture." But God does! Our challenge is to trust not only that God is good – but that He is good . . . all the time – even when life is not so good. John Greenleaf Whittier said in his poem, "The Eternal Goodness" – "Yet, in the maddening maze of things, And tossed by storms and floods, To one fixed hope my spirit clings; I know that God is good." Are you suffering? Christ did, too. But His cross and empty tomb declare this powerful message: God is good, and all will work out for our good if we keep faith with Him. Cling to that one fixed hope. 

  By: Dan Gulley, Smithville

Doom and Gloom, or Hope Beyond the Tomb!

Seinfeld was an American sitcom on NBC that ran for nine seasons from 1989 to 1998. The show has often been described as "a show about nothing," and if you watched it very many times you know that is indeed an accurate description! One episode has a scene where George Costanza (played by actor Jason Alexander) discusses the subject of hope with Jerry Seinfeld. George says: "I don’t want hope. Hope is killing me. My dream is to become hopeless. When you’re hopeless you don’t care. And when you don’t care, the indifference makes you attractive." Jerry replies, "So, hopelessness is the key?" And George replies, "It’s my only hope." 

Humor aside, hopelessness is not only not our only hope, hopelessness is (not to be overly simplistic) simply hopeless. To illustrate, consider this statement (from the brilliant but faithless British philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell, who wrote in Why I Am Not a Christian) about how science presented us with a world that was "purposeless" and "void of meaning." He said, "That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and beliefs are but the chance outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction . . . that the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built" (quoted by Lee Strobel in The Case For a Creator, p 25).

Russell was a brilliant man, but what his high-minded philosophy really boils down to is nothing more than a hopeless end. Compare that hopeless gloom and doom and "scaffold of unyielding despair" with these God- breathed words of faith and assurance from the pen of the apostle Paul in Romans 8:22-28 as he talks about the hope Christians have, even as they sometimes groan from the hurt and pain life brings to bear – "For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. . . . And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose."

I can’t speak for you, but the "scaffold" of doubt and hopelessness and the "foundation of unyielding despair" are far too flimsy and frail to risk and rest my soul on. The hope Jesus Christ gives to defeat sin and the grave is the reason I am a Christian! Think about it.

By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN