Month: March 2019

Since our dear Mom passed into eternity a few weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about hope. I started reading John Eldredge’s All Things New which talks a lot about hope. Last blog, I quoted John a lot concerning the deep longing for hope that we all have.  I want to share some more insights John has about hope in this blog.

John says there are three kinds of hope:

That is a dangerous path for us. When we put too much weight onto our casual hopes or even our precious hopes, we are setting ourselves up for deep disappointment and hurt.

But what are our ultimate hopes? Many years ago, my friend  Kit McDermott told those who came to the Center for Renewal to learn how to listen to God, that “Everything Matters”. How does that tie to hope and to John Eldredge’s book?

Sitting with my Mom those 6 days while she was in a coma, you can easily drift into thoughts about “What matters?” “Can she hear us?” “Does it matter what we say in her presence?” “Does her life matter right now?

Eldredge’s understanding is that the ultimate hope is in the renewal of all things (thus the title). We are not going to go to some ethereal cloud based dwelling and play harps. Rather, he believes that God has shown us through the scriptures, that He is going to renew all things. Everything that is good on this earth will be renewed and made better. Every mountain vista that took our breath away will be restored and made even better. Every vocation that fulfilled a deep longing in us will be perfected and provide even more joy. Every relationship that we ever had will be made right. Our renewed bodies which are broken and battered will literally take our breath away.

Then he states what I would say was the theme of the book.

By this I am fairly sure he means: “No good thing is lost.” As I think about and mourn the loss of our Mom, this gives me hope. An ultimate hope. All the years that she was a faithful mother of four children (five if you count my Dad who often was a big kid); all of those years as a dedicated wife and daughter and sister. All those years of waiting after my Dad’s death.

No good thing is lost. In that there is ultimate hope. And this hope will not disappoint.

I just spent the last 8 days sitting with my family as we watched our Mom slowly slip away. There are many end-of-life issues that surfaced during this time, but I want to reflect on hope. Certainly as we watch a loved one die, we have the hope for them to escape their pain and the degradation they are experiencing; we have the hope for them that they will be re-united with their loved ones who have gone before them;  we have the hope for us that we will see them again. But what is hope?

Last year, on our daughter’s recommendation, I picked up a copy of John Eldredge’s All Things New . But until last night I had not read it. Listen in on what John says about hope.

He begins the book with an assessment of our current condition which could be characterized with the words: “Life sucks.” These are not John’s words but as he assesses the state of our world he says:

I first noticed this “crisis of hope” while keeping track of the number of downloads of my sermons from our web site. For 21 years, year after year, the sermon downloaded the most was “Hoping in God, even if …” It is not the best sermon on hope and people download before they read it but it is indicative of what people are looking for. Recently I heard an interview with N.T. Wright and he expressed surprise that his most popular book was “Surprised by Hope.”

Although these our anecdotal, I think they are indicative that there is a deep longing in us for hope. John defines hope as:

Then he tells us what hope does for us:

Next he identifies a latent desire for hope woven into our lives. He says

Some sort of promise seems to be woven into the tapestry of life. … That promise fits perfectly with the deepest longing of our hearts—the longing for life to come together as we somehow know it was always meant to. The whispers of this promise touch a wild hope deep within our hearts, a hope we hardly dare to name.

John wrote this even as he couldn’t wait for the year to end because of the deep tragedies he experienced during it. The rest of the book is a reflection on this longing we have “for life to come together as we somehow know” it is suppose to. But since I have not finished the book, we’ll have to pick that up in the next blog.

Let me know in the comment section if you feel that there is a promise of hope woven into your life. Certainly during the past 8 days I have experienced that deep longing. Do you feel that longing?

“Let hope keep you joyful. In trouble stand firm. Persist in prayer.”

Romans 12:12