Hope in What?

Okay... it takes time to form a habit, and unfortunately I was imagining I could make this happen by shear force of will.  So, we start again!

Isn't that, however, the nature of the spiritual life?  We think we can make ourselves better by adopting certain disciplines only to find ourselves coming up short once again.  People no longer want to make New Year's Resolutions because they don't stick again.  Heart attack victims are told to change their lifestyle to save their life and yet 90% are back to their old patterns of life within one year again.  People begin a diet only to find themselves weighing even more six months later again.

Our attempts to save ourselves, while valiant, often fail again.  Soon we develop an attitude of despair and a feeling of hopelessness prevails again.  We do our thing without much hope that things will change or get better again.  From one perspective, that seems to be the spiritual malaise that exists in the mist around the edges of our nation today.

Didn't President Obama stir us with his campaign of 2008 inviting us to hope again?  Isn't the failure to meet our hopes part of our frustration with Washington?  Of course it is easy to point to the problem, but to paraphrase Soren Kierkegaard (19th century Danish philosopher), we have this sickness unto death, and it is only when we acknowledge our illness are we able to work toward the cure.  Knowing that we (you and me) cannot fulfill our hopes, live up to our hopes, manufacture our hopes, or realize our hopes is the first step toward addressing what's missing in our lives.

Unfortunately, the Christian community hasn't been of much help as we tackle our dashed hopes.  There is one wing of the movement that simply wants us to settle for a Jesus who will, upon the expiration of this life, whisk us into heaven.  There is another sector of the church that believes through politics we can create heaven on earth.  (Of course there are differing opinions as to what that would look like!)  Then there are those who would suggest that simply by ordering our life around certain beliefs and actions that we can create a small microcosm of hope for ourselves regardless of what is happening in the world.

So where do I fall?  Good question!  I don't really see myself in any of those camps.  Luther had a very strong awareness of duality of life.  We live in the Kingdom of God already revealed but not yet real.  We experience the tension of the incarnate but transcendent God.  We are both sinners and saints simultaneously without the awareness of where one ends and the other begins.  We desire to legislate God's design, but desire the freedom to act for or against that dream.  It goes on and on....

Luther would have us begin with the realization that we cannot save ourselves or our world.  This is ultimately God's work.  Yet as the ELCA's motto would say, God's Work, Our Hands.  Luther would have us see that God has called us into partnership with him, co-creators you might say.  Luther was quoted as saying, 'Work as if it all depends upon you, and pray as if it all depends upon God.'

So I find my hope in knowing that God has not given up on this world.  I find my hope in trusting that I cannot fully understand this God.  Yet I find my hope in knowing that this God continues to forgive me and this world for our rebellion agains him.  I find my hope is knowing that God keeps giving me another chance to start fresh.  So I will add my hands to what God is doing knowing that like Moses I may only get a glimpse of that hope.  Hebrews 11.1 reminds us that the life of faith is indeed the action of faith, trusting in a God who has the whole world in his hands.

Peace,
Pal