Category — Hope

I am making an effort to read Scripture daily so that I might remember.  It is so easy to forget the content of faith, commitments I have made, experiences that have shaped me, and the places where hope can be found.  It is easy to forget Jesus.  Reading Scripture jolts me back to ultimate realities, moves me beyond the numbing effects of daily work and activities, and reconnects me to Jesus.

I have to be reminded because I am so susceptible to the barrage of messages, ideas, and images that pull me this way and that.  All day I am being asked to buy this, consume that, support this candidate, get behind that idea, sign up for this event, or give myself to that cause.  Memory is the tether that ties my mind and heart to that which is crux or core, essential and ultimate.  Without it, I easily drift to lesser stuff.  Reading Scripture is a way of remembering, a way of tethering.  Reading reminds me of God’s story, re-establishes faith, and restores hope.

Today, I open and read Scripture so that the Spirit might remind me, so that I might have a tether.

Growing up I learned via various mediums (church, movies, books) that good and evil existed in separate realms and were color-coded.  The good guys had white hats and said certain words and phrases, and the bad guys wore black hats and said the exact opposite of the good guys.  And yet, I have since discovered that the world is not so clear and simple.  There has been a growing awareness that neat, color-coded categories are not reality.  I have learned that evil sometimes wears a white hat and speaks the language of Christian religion, dominant culture, and free market capitalism.  And goodness and mercy are mediated at times through what might looks like evil.

I am not as certain as I once was in my pronouncements about good and evil.  Where once I had good and evil partitioned into distinct categories, my vision is now blurred by contradictions that I cannot explain.  Where once I considered power and prestige as virtues, security and safety as essential rights, experience has taught me that sometimes the opposite is the case.  Where once I assigned guilt and suffering based on circumstances, conditions, or culture, I now wince at the callousness and arrogance of such thinking.

What I have witnessed is that God shows up in the midst of terrible suffering and injustice.  He cannot be relegated to one side of a dichotomy nor does he work only in particular arenas.  And thus, because God demonstrates his power, and expresses his mercy, grace, and love throughout all reality, even pain and suffering, sickness and death, I cannot make simple evil/goodness declarations.  If I do, I will surely miss him.

I do not believe God causes suffering, but neither can I believe is he on the outside of it looking in.  I must resist and fight evil, and join the efforts to seek justice for the oppressed, care for those on the margins, and work for the liberation of those trapped in the aftermath of an earthquake.  However, I must also be willing to see him in the wretchedness of life, the rubble of devastation, human suffering, and death.  And more than merely observing him there, I must join him there.

Because God showed up in the midst of our evil and abusive world, suffered our shame and reproach, and died a cruel death, I can believe and hope for his goodness and grace in the worst of situations.  Because I do not have an adequate explanation for hunger, human trafficking, and death, I must look for him in midst of these.  This, for me, is reason to hope.  Likewise, in the midst of my own rubble of greed, consumption, and evil desires, I long for him to be at work.  This is my hope.

Two weeks before he was burned at the stake in 1415, Jan Hus penned these words in a letter to friends…

O holy Lord Christ draw near to us, we cannot follow Thee.  Give us a strong and willing spirit, and when the weakness of flesh appears, let Thy grace go on before us, accompany and follow us, accompany and follow us. For without Thee we can do nothing, least of all suffer a cruel death for Thy sake.  Grant a willing spirit, a fearless heart, true faith, steadfast hope, perfect love, that for Thy sake we may, with patience and joy, surrender our life. Amen. (cited in E. Schweinitz, The History of the Church Known as the Moravian, or the Unitas Fratrum …,1901, 70)

I am not in a prison cell this morning awaiting execution, but Hus’ prayer reminds me to have a fearless heart, true faith, steadfast hope, and perfect love in the midst of whatever is outside my door or in my heart.  Whether I die a cruel death or suffer through difficult change, perplexing relationships, or disappointments, a surrendered life and the accompanying presence of Christ is my only hope.

One of my students wrote the following in a paper on the relationship of hope and mission …

Witnesses that speak of God’s power to change the lives of others, yet live in defeat, are not very convincing.  With hope, we must realize that redemption is possible in all areas of our lives.  In this way, we embody hope.  We must also tell about this hope that we have experienced.  We must utter that we have seen another way to live.

Hope and mission - the two truly go hand-in-hand.  We can go through all the right motions, execute the right strategies, and follow the latest formulas, but if we do not have hope, live in hope, experience hope then our message is hollow, our actions are empty.  We are to utter with hope that there is another way to live.

A young seminarian directed me to these words by Søren Kierkegaard …

Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God.  Yes, it is dreadful to even be alone with the New Testament.

We often talk of the Jesus Way as if it is the ‘best life ever’ or a glorious and happy everafter.  When in fact the call of God is a call to take up a cross and follow him to death and the words of Scriptures are instructions in how to live according to a different kingdom.  The Jesus Way is a dreadful way, because it runs counter to my hopes of success, self-gratification, consumption, and advancement.  And yet, if this dread is only theoretical talk or for the radical fringe, then Christianity is truly just another religious way with teachings and a moral code.  Rather, my expereince is that when I fall into the hands of the living God and seek to live according to his kingdom, I mourn the death of my hopes and my ways, but I also rise to a new hope and new ways.  Dread is prelude to becoming a transformed person with new and true hope. 

By acknowledging this and writing these words, I do not escape the harsh reality of what falling into the hands of the living God will do to my appetites, habits, attitudes, comfortable lifestyle, and pet sins.  The way in which Jesus calls me to walk demands that I do more than understand it or write about it.  I must personally know and walk in its dreadfulness, if I am to live in its hope.

“But [White Liberals] think all the world’s problems can be fixed without any cost to themselves.  We do not believe that. There’s a lot to be said for sacrifice, remorse, even pity.  It’s what separates us from roaches.” 
 -Dr. Paul Farmer, as quoted by Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a man would cure the world (2004), 40.

When I am discouraged, tired, or near despair, I look at a small photograph pinned to the wall over my desk.  In this photo, Pastor Allen Yuan Xiangchen and I are seated at a small table in his Beijing apartment.  A friend of his had taken me down backstreets and alleyways to a nondescript building and a tiny, ground floor apartment to meet him.  There was no appointment secretary, plaques of honor, pictures for sale, or adulating followers.  What I found was a rather small man and his wife - two saints. 

Pastor Yuan began his ministry right after the Japanese surrendered in 1945.  He opened a prayer room in Beijing where he baptized new believers.  Because he refused to join the state-sponsored, national church, he was arrested in 1958 and sentenced to life in prison for “counter-revolutionary crimes.”  He spent the next 22 years of his life in prison doing forced labor.  He had no Bible and no contact with his family during these years.  Upon his release in 1979, he immediately returned to what he had been doing when arrested.  People would pack his small apartment to pray and to hear Pastor Yuan teach from the Bible.  He did not conceal what he was doing nor did he consider it to be “underground.”  He said he no longer feared what the authorities might do to him.

During my visit, he asked one question after another about my faith and how he might pray for me.  He was concerned that I live as a faithful witness to Jesus in my country and among my family and acquaintances.  Toward the end of our visit, I asked him how he kept from losing hope during the years of hardship and separation from his family.  He immediately responded by quoting the opening verses of Psalms 27-

The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the defense of my life; whom shall I dread?  When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh, my adversaries and my enemies, they stumbled and fell. Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear; though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident. 

The face of this saint glowed with confidence as he spoke these words.  In this frail body and watery eyes, I witnessed strong and vibrant hope.  Years of abuse, privation, and cold had not crushed hope.  His testimony was not that he had overcome his oppressors but that he had decided to hope in the Lord.

Pastor Yuan died on August 16, 2005 but his testimony lives.  His testimony of hope gives me hope.  His picture reminds me to choose to be confident in the One who has defeated evildoers, adversaries, enemies, and even death.

Do not succumb to the calls to fear.  From the Left and the Right, leaders of our society and managers of the economy are telling us the sky is falling and the only thing we can do is anxiously wring our hands.  This is not the time for hand wringing, rather it is the exact moment in which we are to live by faith and not just talk about faith.  If we walk by faith rather than sight, then the reign of God is the reality we live by rather than falling stocks, bank failures, and diminishing buying power.  Resist the notion that we rise and fall on the market; instead, embrace the promises of God.  It is especially in times like these that he can be believed and trusted.  This kind of rebellion against fear produces hope within us and gives witness to those in despair of the hope that is in Jesus Christ.  Resist the calls to fear.  Fear not!

There was a time I blissfully munched on Snickers and Almond Joys.  I thought these bars of sugar, nugget, coconut, and cocoa were quite a treat.  A good friend once referred to me as an ‘inhaler’ of common, run-of-the-mill chocolate sweets.  But, hey, this was all I knew.  Then one day I wandered into Wiseman House Chocolates, a place Texas Highways calls ‘Chocolate Heaven’, and now I am ruined.  I cannot go back to the other stuff.  Oh … I could, but I don’t want to.  The Gran Saman truffle is quite an experience, and once you have had this experience and are blessed with this knowledge, a brightly wrapped, convenience store chocolate bar holds little appeal.  I still occasionally go into the local gas station mini-mart, walk around looking for something sweet and chocolate, but walk out the door with nothing.  Why?  Because I know and recall the experience of something far better. 

In the realm of faith formation, what I have experienced of God’s goodness, grace, and love changes everything and causes me to be expectant of more of the same.  Knowledge of who God is and what he does radically alters my ideas of goodness, forgiveness, and love.  I now live in the hope of true goodness, real forgiveness and selfless love. 

And yet, I still look around for identity and satisfaction in stuff and ideas that I know do not compare with what I have experienced of God.  I could say that I am either dazzled by bright wrappings or my consumer conditioning takes over.  But the truth is that I forget who God is and what he does, and thus, I settle for short-term gratification that gives me a quick fix or fills me up for the moment.  Once the sugar high is over, I feel empty and cheated.  

I need to be with people of faith, because they remind me of who God is and what he can do.  I need my local church, because it is where I gather with other recovering inhalers of the common, run-of-the-mill stuff of life.  I need to hear the words again and again - ”O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refugee in Him” (Ps 34:8).

The glittered, brightly-packaged, attractive stuff of life beckons, but I have tasted the real deal.  I am prone to go back to what seems to be enough, but I don’t want to.  I have come to know God through Jesus Christ and have experienced his goodness, mercy, grace, love … and so I hope in him all the more.

At some point this summer, I decided that I needed to produce a newsletter in order to stay connected with friends, former students, current students, CSI-Xers, and people I have met along the way.  I wanted to pass along thoughts about what I was reading, conferences that I thought would be worthwhile to attend, and contacts that might be valuable.  I even wrote a draft of the first newsletter.  Well, as a good friend and I were having a pita sandwich in a rather quaint deli in Hico, Texas, I told him what I was about to do.  I was sure he would blurt out, “Wow, Stroope.  That is such a great idea.”    Instead, he politely informed me as to how arcane and old school I was.  “If you really want to go public, get your ideas out there, and stay connected,” he said, “then blog!”  I considered blogging as only a fad for the young and excessively verbal - and certainly not something I would ever do.  Well, my friend spent the rest of the lunch hour (and several encounters since then) convincing me to blog and then teaching this old dog to do new tricks.  So, you have before you my first post.  If you look left, you will see the important stuff that I am bequeathing to you …

• explanation about mereHope
• my reading list
• some of my all-time favorite quotes
• notices of events and conferences
• friends, bloggers, and churches I want you to know.

As you look right, you will see current stuff …

• who I am (for those who stumble onto this blog)
• what I am currently reading
• what books you must read

And down the middle, I hope to have a running conversation with you.  I will let you know what I am reading (quotes and comments), what questions are in my mind, the issues that I feel must be addressed, and my musings on the church, mission, culture, poverty, etc.

More than anything, I am looking for signs of hope that are within the church, mission, culture, poverty, etc.  I am thinking alot about hope these days … but more on that later.

So, thanks to Jayson and Michael (http://threestream.com/) this old dog is blogging.