This is Lent: Our Hope
Jonathan Kerhoulas | March 25th, 2024
Are we living through a crisis of hope? Turn on the television, browse Youtube, or perform a brief scroll through your preferred social media platform and you might assume the answer is no. Smiling selfies, new experiences, an excess of opportunities all seem to announce the same thing: hope is in no small supply. And from one angle this is right. Hope doesn’t have to be meta and transcendent for it to still be hopeful. We all carry hope in small, medium, and large containers. We hope we got an A on that final, we hope our crush feels the same way, we hope our research gets noticed, we hope our candidate of choice gets elected, we hope to purchase our first home, we hope our children like us, we hope our bodies stay healthy. As many have noted, without hope, we die.
But cue your recollection of the illustration of the glass jar and the dilemma of how to fit in all the rocks, pebbles, and sand (an apparent impossibility if you begin with sand on the bottom!) Is it possible that our smaller hopes begin to overcrowd the system, to drown out the deeper heart’s cry for something more durable and personal than the often shallow forms of hope we’re offered by society? Are we filled with tiny grains of hope (lower case) but missing the bigger and better forms of it (upper case Hope)?
Maybe this is the real question: How do I position the hope of Easter to sit on the top rung on the ladder of my heart? We’ve all got a lot of things vying for our time, attention, faith, hope, and love. How does the hope captured in Jesus’ resurrection begin to occupy top spot, first chair, in your life?
In Ephesians 1:18-20, the Apostle Paul writes, “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”
Paul prays for “heart enlightenment.” Think about it! Paul doesn’t first introduce new religious techniques or tips. Instead he asks the Lord to help us know and experience the hope of the gospel. Paul appears to be a realist – knowing full well that the human heart, (even the regenerated heart of a believer), is prone to wander away from grace, quick to attach to other things for hope and meaning. And so he prays that the Lord would open the eyes of our hearts that we might know the hope to which we have been called. It’s a prayer for merciful intervention. It’s the request of blind Bartimaeus in Mark 10:51, “Let me recover my sight.” Help me to see you rightly, Lord. Help me to hope again.
Second, Paul prays that our hearts would be opened to the incomparably great power offered to us in Christ – a power that is “the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead.” Resurrection power! Death defeating power. Sin crushing, shame ending power. This is what the Spirit of God places on offer to those who believe. The hope of the gospel isn’t a naïve hope or wishful thinking. It’s a living hope. Is it living within you? It can.
Response
Find a quiet moment to prayerfully read I Peter 1:3-4 where Peter describes our invitation into “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Then ask the Lord to enlighten the eyes of your heart by revealing 1) where you’ve banked your “living hopes,” and 2) how great is the hope secured through Jesus’ resurrection. As you pray, invite the Holy Spirit to make the hope of Easter the top rung in your heart.
For further reflection on hope:
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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
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May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.
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Surely there is a future,
and your hope will not be cut off.
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He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
