The Presumption of Hope
Sometimes it sounds like a broken record; these cycles of despair and desperation our world continually churns to the surface. Our current events strike us from blind angles, leaving our vision blurred and swirling. Even as believers, we find our footing faulty, and our knees weakened by the crush of discomfiting calamity; for some of us more than others, depending on where we’re standing. The waves crash, and whether we’re resting on our picnic blankets neatly sprawled 100 feet up the beach, or we’re being dragged beyond the surf by riptides, the ebb and flow of suffering may strike us differently.
Last week we spent time in Estonia reconnecting with friends and colleagues from our region, many of whom we hadn’t seen in nearly 4 years. A number of our dear friends couldn’t make it due to the war and its impact in Ukraine. As you are surely aware, the effects are far reaching, with refugees flooding across the Eastern and Central European regions. While so many are finding joy in serving the needs of these refugees, it’s also an overwhelming endeavor. The suffering and pain, the loss of hope and despondency can be daunting to face, much less to be living through.
In the face of such utter desolation and misery, it’s difficult to orient towards one’s moorings and find a lasting hope. While it’s relatively simple to apply the promises of scripture and Christ to the situation, sometimes our prescriptions from “100 feet up the beach” can feel cliché at best and insensitive at worst to those being swept into the deluge. Through one crisis or another, many of us have been there. Why do we flounder to hope? Why do we continue to struggle with God when our “whys” go unanswered? Have we not come to a place of rest in God’s sovereignty? Shouldn’t hope be the thing that flows in streams from the very marrow of our bones when we know that the Alpha and Omega holds us in the palm of His hand? Yet as the handgrips slide from our own sweating palms, such assurances seem to somehow elude us. It might be helpful to remind ourselves and apply some timeless truths beyond reductionist bromides.
1. Hope is not a magical element imparted to all Christians with a shelf-life commencing at the moment of salvation and enduring unto eternity. Quite the opposite in fact. We know that there is truly a putting on and putting off that permeates every moment of the Christian life. Ephesians 6 commands us to put on the full armor of God, while Galatians 5 urges us to “walk by the Spirit,” implying that the manifestation of the fruits and work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and lives comes with some active aligning of our purposes and hearts with God’s, and the inverse of not walking in the Spirit is likewise the somewhat natural or normative state of personal spiritual affairs.
2. Hope is cultivated within a community and with the assistance of others. If the pandemic lockdowns taught us anything, it was that we are not created to live in isolation. Ecclesiastes 4:10 informs us, “For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!” How intentional we must be not only to avoid walking alone, but to prevent our brethren from doing so either! It might be helpful for us to remember that in the darkest moments of our Savior’s life, as he sweat drops of blood in the garden, he brought his closest friends with him. Worthless and impotent as they were in that moment, his retreat from them was not further than a stone’s throw(Luke 22:41). May we actively administer hope to one another.
3. Struggling to hope is not a sin. For those who have inhaled deeply on the liquid bitter of loss, who have been stripped of security, dreams, purpose, health, or a loved one there is no condemnation to be found in the pages of scripture. There is only encouragement to see God as He truly is, that our hearts might be born up by the grace of God to hope. The grace that bore up Christ in the garden is not a grace that negates suffering or promises dulled pain of present afflictions. It is a grace that allows us to see God for who He is, choose to trust Him, and fix our hope on Him despite the reality of our current condition.
In view of these things, let us do our best to walk by the Spirit and bear up our Ukrainian brethren. Our indefatigable weapon is prayer. May their needs be always on our tongue before our maker. We want them to know that they are not alone in their suffering and indignity. May we each communicate our support of their struggles in the ways we are able. If possible, we should take every opportunity to be the hands and feet of Jesus among them. In what ways might we bear their burdens? One way is to provide material help through the Ukraine Crisis Relief Fund at ABWE. You can be assured that when you give through this avenue, the colleagues whom we personally know and love, will utilize these funds to provide present help to suffering people. We have the opportunity to administer hope. Of course we know that true hope is found in Christ alone, and a gift administered through these ministries has an added benefit of being transmitted by gospel-loving and gospel-communicating missionaries and local churches.
Several weeks ago we reached out to our Ukrainian church partners here in Prague and asked if there was any way that we could help them. Despite having filled their homes with refugees and more on the way, their concern could only be concentrated on those who remained in Ukraine. I received a phone call on a following Friday evening asking if we had funds available and how much. A driver would be arriving who would take as many supplies as possible to distribute to residents of embattled eastern cities. One car load seemed a pitifully meager contribution to the need, but we went to the local pharmacy just before closing and cleaned it out of surgical supplies, pain killers, and children’s medications as well as some infant formula. We took the goods to our meet up location where we met the Ukrainian brother and his local guide, another Ukrainian living in a nearby Czech city. Ironically, it was the Ukrainian brother from Ukraine who spoke some English and we exchanged small talk about where we were all from and condensed versions of the events that led us to this meeting, alternating awkwardly back and forth translating between Czech and English and Russian. When we mentioned that we were from California, he eagerly offered that he was one of 5 siblings, and his other 4 siblings all live in Sacramento, CA near our own hometowns. I asked if he had ever been able to visit them there, to which he matter of factly replied, “No, my mission is in Ukraine.” We exchanged what I could only describe as the warmest of farewells in the crisp night air, supplied him with coffee and pastries for the long drive ahead and watched his vehicle disappear into the night.
The needs continue and will for some time ahead. We would encourage each to give as they are able, to amplify hope by bearing the burdens of our brothers, and letting them know they are not alone.
