hope

I really wanted to pen a new blog entry before February 16th rolled over to February 17th. But as I sit here on my bed and my fingers dance across the keyboard, my heart is heavy, my mind swollen with sadness...mingled with hope. A short time ago I received word that a dear pastor passed away this evening.


Stunned silence. Grief. Broken heart for his precious wife, children, and grandchildren. Thoughts flooding my mind for the saints whom he shepherded for so many years.


This wasn't my blog topic for tonight, but I can't seem to shake it all from my mind. God interrupted me.


Life is a vapor. My God is eternal. Life is uncertain. My God is a sure foundation.


What is it about interruptions such as these that stop us so abruptly and completely? Those clothes can wait to be hung. Those dishes can be washed in the morning. That new book can be enjoyed another day. For now I am slowed to a place of quiet reflection and pondering.


I reflect and ponder because my attempts at understanding or explaining are finite and futile at best. But this reassuring, resounding truth overwhelms the questions, fears, and grief like a blanket wrapped around the nakedness of my soul: I AM.


He is hope, rest, peace, comfort, joy, a man well-aquainted with grief. He is.


If you know my pastor (who happens to be my boss), then it's no wonder I have been reading a book by Vance Havner. My eyes and my heart rest on these words tonight:

For there is injustice and senseless misery in this world and oceans of bitterness that no smooth proverbs can mitigate and no logic solve. There are hateful situations and wretched circumstances that we cannot make head nor tail of; the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer; fine lives snuff out early and devils live on and on; war and crime and poverty and pain drive men to wonder whether God is deaf or dead. One cannot face such a world with a string of phrases nor unravel its evil with the yardstick of reason. Most of our comforters are pitifully inadequte.

We are not primarily to figure out trouble nor even to bear it--we are to use it and, rightly used, some very fine things can be made of it. . . . The greater our trouble the greater in character we are if we master it. It may be a bitter struggle that drains us of every bit of moral energy at the time. But if we come out sturdier in our hearts, then we have converted it into a blessing and transmuted gall into glory. (In Tune With Heaven, pp. 196-197)

I told a friend tonight that in moments like these, I am even more grateful for hope. Hope that does not disappoint. Hope that moves our tunnel vision beyond the temporal and spreads before our eyes the grand banquet of the eternal. Hope that can tune the heaviest heart to sing a beautiful melody, though its chords may be disonant and its tune frail in places.


And now that my mind has been pondering and grasping for words for well over thirty minutes, you know what is most amazing to me? That my heart longs to burst forth in praise to my gracious God. As if springs of worship find their way through the complexities of my thoughts and burst through to the surface and spill out over my soul. And their cool, soothing streams flow with a refreshing theme: hope.

"Let Your steadfast love, O Lord, be upon us, even as we hope in You."

Psalm 33:22

"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful."

Hebrews 10:23

"But I will hope continually and will praise You yet more and more." 

Psalm 71:14