Not the end but the road



I'm a shortsighted fool.

In fact, let me try again: I'm a persistently (almost wilfully) forgetful, shortsighted fool. 

I miss the point. I get it wrong all the time. I forget that I should be wearing my glasses. I listen to my proud little soul that stubbornly claims that it can see exactly what's going on. But without corrective lenses everything is blurry. I should be wearing my glasses. 

Life surprises me with how disappointing it is, time and time again. My expectations turn out to be wrong and there's this familiar tug of sadness as I realise that I have to let go of my dream - my plan, my hopes. 

But God is doing something kind in our hearts when we go through the death of our dreams. I got a hint of this recently as I was chatting to a Spanish-speaking friend of mine: 'you're feeling desilusión' she stated, two languages merging for a moment. This got the linguist in me thinking. To be disappointed in Spanish is to be disillusioned, in French it is to be ‘déçu,’ which as an English speaker always makes me think of 'deceived.' These are both startlingly strong expressions which attribute blame in a way the English doesn’t. You’re disappointed not because of what happened, these words imply, but because of your hopes. Your hopes were wrong. 

The Bible consistently urges us to watch our hopes: ‘Do not put your trust in princes, in mortal man who cannot save’ (Psalm 146).  Repeatedly in the Old Testament God's people have a choice about their hope: will they look to physical power and strength to save them or will they look to God? 'Chariots and horses' becomes a shorthand for this worldly hope that appears invincible and secure. Pharaoh pursues God's people, no chariot or horsepower spared. And what happens? They are utterly annihilated. 'Some trust in chariots and some in horses,' Psalm 20 declares, 'but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.' (cf. Isaiah 31 and 36). Where you put your hope is a big deal in the Bible and it's a stark choice: the strength and riches of Egypt which seem very solid and real to the Israelites - or God and his promises. And sadly, the Israelites are shortsighted and forgetful. Despite all the evidence they have of God's faithfulness, they keep on choosing Egypt. They keep on putting their hope in the wrong place. And I do too.

When I was 18 I had my first experience of hopes placed in a boy dying an abrupt and brutal death. I can remember an overwhelming sense of disappointment which was hard to handle and felt humiliating. I remember a long car journey south with my dad, tears silently streaming down my face, not wanting to talk about it because it didn't seem worth talking about. Crying for hours because you're disappointed? Isn't that an overreaction?

Then I stumbled across Romans 5 and realised that God doesn't take disappointed hopes lightly. In Romans 5:5 Paul puts hope and disappointment together in the same sentence - and says that the hope that God has given to us is drastically different from all our other hopes. ‘This hope’ (The hope of the knowing God’s glory) ‘does not disappoint, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.’ Gospel-birthed hope is definitively disappointment-proof. It will never let us down. Aged 18, I'd put my hope in a love that didn't come through, and I was left with crushed hopes and no love. But 'this hope' Paul argues, is ours forever because God's love has been permanently deposited in our hearts. It's the complete reverse of romance-based hope: this isn't hoping that you will be loved - it's knowing that you are loved and therefore you will always have hope.

I tend to be taken aback by the bumps and jolts of disappointment in my life. And that's a vision problem: I'm looking in the wrong place. I'm listening to the world as it insists that this life is it - that we're supposed to have all our dreams fulfilled here and now.  The hope we have in Jesus is not shaken by set-backs and pain; it is experienced through them. Suffering does not kill this hope, it strengthens the hope - it produces the hope.  

That perspective is the glasses that I need to make sure I'm wearing, because without them I won’t see this life accurately. This life isn’t it - it’s not ‘the end’ as Martin Luther said - ‘it is the road.’ The road leading to a resilient, beautiful hope that cannot disappoint. 

"This life therefore is not righteousness, but growth in righteousness, not health, but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not yet what we shall be, but we are growing toward it, the process is not yet finished, but it is going on, this is not the end, but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory, but all is being purified. " Martin Luther

Comments

Popular Posts