Therefore I have hope

How much hope would you say you have today?

If you're anything like me, cynicism has grown up along with you, leaching out your confidence, growing sleek off your disappointments and pain. We live in a sceptical age, where hope is in short supply. Where cynicism is a bully with a smug and superior tone, always eager to bring up the past: 

'Just think about that time - you were really exposed as naive.'

'Remember how wrong you were then'. 

'Come on, live in the real world - what reason do you have to think things will be any different this time?'

I often let the voice of cynicism win. He has so much evidence, so many examples. Hopes that I've had of what God could do -  in situations, in people, in me -  that never materialised. Prayers that didn't so much go unanswered so much as counter-answered (the opposite of what I prayed for is what happened). You find yourself scanning the landscape hesitantly and concluding with the Psalmist that being a Christian doesn't make much practical difference - 'Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure (Psalm 73).' You have some hope left, but it is faltering, vague and unsure.

Thing is, I can't resurrect anything. Faced with the real threats of this world - death, depravity, darkness - there is nothing I can do. I guess that's partly why cynicism grows as we accumulate more years under our belts - you see your own powerlessness to stem the tide of hurt more clearly. Hope goes hand in hand with power. As you realise how little power you have, your sense of hope fades.

When you're bogged down in the day to day, it's easy to forget that as Christians our hope has nothing to do with our own power. But it's such good news that it doesn't. 

God can turn back the tide. He can breathe new life into utterly dead bodies. He can bring beauty from broken things. And that's how we have hope as Christians, Paul argues:

'I pray... that you may know the hope to which he has called you... and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength (that God) exerted when (God) raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.' (Ephesians 1:18-20) 

The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is working in us and securing our hope. Not a memory of that power, not a weaker imitation of that power. The identical power.

Maybe you're facing a situation or a week or a future that feels pretty hopeless.

You can't change it yourself. You have precisely zero power.

But you have God's death-destroying power working within you. 

And therefore you have hope.

(....Regardless of what you know the voice of worldly cynicism would say about it.)

Therefore you have hope.