Last Christmas (2019) our SEASONS
newsletter asked, “What’s this JOY thing
all about?” (You may see it on our BLOG
at Deaconry.Org). We noted then that JOY
comes from knowing that God’s love is
unconditional, even if unrequited. He loves
us whether or not we love Him. We are assured
of His forever love. What has that to do with
Hope?
While reading the Old Testament book of
Ruth I found the Hebrew word “tiqvah”. It is
translated as “Hope”. It can mean “the thing that I long for”, but the
root literally means a “cord” or a “line”.
Hope connects us to the future, as though tied by a “cord”. I imagine
a rope around my waist, fastened at the other end to a point in the
future. Hope draws me onward, it “reels me in”. A sports fan may
Hope their team wins this week, and they are “tied” to the upcoming
weekend by the cord of that expectation. But the next week a new Hope
is needed, unless there is a future beyond next week.
If there is nothing to connect to, it is as though there is no future.
Despair or desperation can take root in the absence of Hope. When
Hope is tied to transient things, deep thirsts seem unquenchable: Even
if we find something to assuage the thirst, we thirst again.
The Gospel of John, chapter four, tells of an encounter between Jesus
and a woman in Samaria at Jacob’s well. Jesus asks for a drink from
the well, and the woman questions why he, a Jew, would ask her, a
Samaritan woman, for a drink. Jesus says to the woman, “Everyone
who drinks of this [well] water will be thirsty again, but whoever
drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give
them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
When we discover Hope beyond ourselves, “drinks” that cannot satisfy
lose their appeal. The endless repetition of craving and partaking, only
to crave again, is exposed as futile. Jesus can legitimately claim if we
drink of the water He offers we will “never thirst”. The cord of Hope
that Jesus offers connects us to an eternal future, beyond ourselves, and
it “reels us in” beyond the next thing. I still have Hope my team will
win this weekend, but if that’s the only Hope I have to drink from my
thirst (“the thing that I long for”) will never be satisfied.
This Hope that Christians speak of at Christmas springs from the Joy
conveyed by the assurance of God’s love, a love expressed to us through
Jesus Christ. God’s love is sure from since before time began, constant
in the present, and inexhaustible as it extends into eternity beyond
imagination. When we drink of that water, which Jesus offers, we are
connected by the cord of God’s love in the here and now to a future
that is beyond ourselves, endless, and filled with JOY.
That is one way of understanding what this Hope thing is all about.