How Can We Hope?

Here are some thoughts about this Sunday's second lesson that were sent out to the people of St. Timothy Lutheran Church. What are your thoughts? Let me know!

Second Reading: Romans 5:1-8

¹Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ²through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. ³And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, ⁴and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, ⁵and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
  ⁶For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. ⁷Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. ⁸But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

This is a very rich passage of scripture. Paul is writing to congregations in Rome that are in disarray. There is infighting and division. Meanwhile, they are under the heavy hand of Roman authority and are suffering because of it.

So, Paul tells them and us all what believers have because of being justified with God—being made right with God. Everything flows from that relationship. The piece I want to focus on is hope, a word that is repeated throughout this passage. The source of our hope is Christ and our relationship with him. It is not a characteristic that we have to do something in order to receive it. It is pure gift and is part of the whole salvation package.

How do we grow our hope? Unfortunately, it is through the difficult things in life. As Paul puts it, “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Ok, none of that sounds too difficult until we look at the beginning—suffering. It’s hard to connect suffering and hope and yet, look at various people in history who have suffered and yet seemed so hopeful. One that comes to mind is Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian whose family hid Jews in their home during WW II.

Corrie and her family were all arrested and sent to a concentration camp. She alone survived. Corrie used to tell the story of how she would complain about the lice in the part of the camp in which she and her sister, Betsy resided. Betsy gently reminded her that it was the lice that kept the Nazi soldiers from coming in and harassing them!

There are others we can think of like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi and so on. They all suffered, and yet their hope seemed boundless.

Finally, hope is so powerful that it “does not disappoint us.” That’s saying something and I like the reason that is so, “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” Can you visualize this pouring? I don’t imagine it as nice and neat, but rather, it as messy because our extravagant God does not hold back in his giving of gifts.

In the midst of these days of COVID 19 and protests and violence, can we dig into our relationship with God and access that hope in which he wants us to abide? It’s easy to get discouraged, but as Paul elsewhere told the Romans, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Let us pray: Great God, you look on us with love. In the middle of the ugliness we see on our tv screens and read about, you are with us and with all who suffer. Ground our lives in your hope so that all people would see Jesus in us. Amen.

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