HOPE

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.

Romans 8.24

If ever we needed a time to be patient it is now! Three lockdowns within twelve months and no definite end in sight. A totally topsy-turvy world with seemingly no certainties left for us to have faith in. Today I read something that impacted my thoughts. It’s to do with facts and feelings.

We need to look at the facts of a matter, any matter, and once we have the facts we need to examine how it makes us feel. Now, if we reverse this, we can end up being controlled by our feelings, regardless of the facts, which can lead to feelings of hopelessness. So, if you feel something about a matter but you do not have any facts to back up what you are feeling, you then start finding facts to suit your feelings, thus building stronger feelings for something that may in the end be of no consequence.

Take for example being given a chronic medical diagnosis. Your immediate feelings of fear may make you do a google search, looking for facts that back up and increase your fear. If instead, you listen first to the facts of what the doctors tell you, you can adjust your feelings accordingly, and the worst case scenario, built around feelings in your head, may never happen.

So what has all this to do with hope? It seems to me we are living in a time where ‘the facts’ of covid and how we should be living life are constantly changing. This can make us feel insecure, unstable and anxious about the future. Our feelings of dis-ease may increase and we start looking for facts to support our fearful thoughts. Training our thoughts to stay in the moment, without projecting ahead to worst case scenarios, looking at the facts we are given as they arise and then examining how we feel, may help lessen our fear. Remembering that tomorrow is a new day and the facts may change for the better, may give us a perspective of hope rather than despair.

I learnt, as a result of years of living with a child with longterm fatigue, that the feelings of fear I had made no difference to the outcome of her illness. A more hope filled faith on my part, that all would turn out OK, would have saved me years of worry! That’s not to say the worse doesn’t sometimes happen, just that there is little point in worrying about it in advance. Cultivating a mindset that hopefully all will be well and projecting a positive attitude even in the face of difficult challenges may enable one to experience more joy filled moments.

Of course this is far easier to say than do and personally I cannot do it in my own strength. But if I look to the promises made by God to us I realise that we can be a people of hope. I realise why I find humanist funeral services so bleak – they lack hope. That is not to say that the service itself may not be beautifully written and conducted. The words heartfelt and warm, reminding us what a wonderful person the deceased was and how much we love them. But without the hope of life continuing on its journey with God and heaven awaiting, what can be said by a humanist that gives us any hope in this death?

Likewise, if we take God out of the equation of this pandemic, what hope are so many people left with? Those who have lost their health or job, their loved ones. Those who have lost their joy in life, unable to be with family and friends. The depression, stress and anxiety caused by exhaustion. So many casualties it is easy to lose any hope in a meaningful future. Except, for me, the one unchanging presence in all that is going on, is God. However hard life gets, God is in it with us and not as some distant uncaring presence but as a God who wants to wrap his arms around us to give us comfort. His word never fails, his love never ends and if we trust in him we can live with the knowledge that one day all will be well, as revealed in the following verses:

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Revelation 21. 1-4