Hope - you can find it in a strange year like 2020

Hope seems to be hard to find today, doesn’t it? Gloom and doom dominate the headlines, and they try to drown out what little sunshine you might be able to find in this ridiculous year that is 2020. But we can’t live with no hope, so what do we human beings do as we go about living in this temporary home called Earth?

Maybe it depends on where you’re looking for hope. If you’re one who looks to the things of this world, how is that working? It’s not working for me at all. I’m hoping you aren’t one who looks to politicians and government. Only division and strife reside in Washington, D.C., these days, and it runs on both sides of the political spectrum. However, that’s a topic for another time.

Hope is contagious, but you do have to look for it in the right place. (Photo from chinohillshowler.com)

What if you and I are looking for hope with the wrong perspective? Anyone can have hope when things are going well. Hey, if the future’s so bright (you gotta wear shades), hope comes easy. Probably too easy. Is it possible that hope is more valuable when things aren’t going well?

English writer and lay theologian G.K. Chesterton might have said it best; “Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, or it is no virtue at all. As long as matters are hopeful (things are going well), hope is mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength.”

I look at rioting in our major cities, COVID-19, politicians acting like children in daycare, sex trafficking at an all-time high, Americans trying to tear apart their own country, and the cynical journalist in me gets downright ornery. I never thought I’d live to see some of the things we’ve seen in the United States. It’s so easy to lose hope as human beings. Let me give you an example.

Halford E Luccock was a prominent American Methodist Minister and Professor at Yale University. He wrote a book called Unfinished Business, and part of it dealt with what the loss of hope can look like in people. Just picture this in your mind.

One night at dinner, a man who had spent many summers in Maine told his companions a fascinating story about his experiences in a little town called Flagstaff. The town was to be flooded and become part of a large lake for which a dam was being built. In the months before it was to be flooded, all improvements and repairs in the whole town were stopped. What was the use of painting a house if it was going to get covered with water in six months? Why repair anything when the whole village was going to get wiped out? (Logical questions, I think.)

So, week by week, the whole town became more and more bedraggled, more gone to seed, and just more woebegone by the day. The moral of the story is, “Where there is no faith in the future, there is no power in the present.”

I don’t know about you, but when I focus on everything else going on in the world, it sucks the hope right out of me. As a man who comes from a long line of me with “melancholy dispositions,” it’s not a good thing. My wife says I turn into Eeyore when I get down in the dumps. She’s rather kind in that assessment.

Riots are just one of the headlines stealing hope in 2020. (Photo from Newsweek.

Why is it so hard as a believer to not get caught up in everything going on today? This is not our home. As a journalist, you get to see a lot of people at their worst. Have you ever heard the adage, “if it bleeds, it leads?” Bad news catches attention in broadcast news, and it sells more newspapers if it’s on the front page. Maybe I just answered my question?

To summarize Webster’s definition of “hope,” it says to cherish a desire with anticipation or to expect with confidence. Where is our confidence level these days? The BIBLICAL definition of hope is the confident expectation of what God has promised, and its strength is in his faithfulness.

What does God Himself say about the future? “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). Does that mean everything in your life will be honkey dory? Of course not. There will be struggles. But even those struggles are a part of His ultimate plan for you.

Actually, Romans 8:28 says that very thing. “All things work together for the good of those who love God and called according to His purpose.” All things. Not just good things, but bad things do too. It’s all a part of His plan. He is in control, even in the middle of the nonsense we’re living in these days.

Colossians 3:1 says, “Set your mind on things above, not on earthly things.” Where is your focus? Where is mine? Not where mine should be lately, that’s for sure.

Get into the Word, folks. It has the answers we are looking for in this age of confusion, and all we need to do is open it up. Tell your family and friends, or anyone else who asks, that this book has the answers to their questions.

God wants to rescue you and me from the chaos, confusion, and depression that’s wreaking havoc on us in 2020.