With all the concern about financial meltdowns on a global basis ordinary people have become concerned about what the future might hold. Will super schemes be in tact when retirement comes? Will there still be a job in the building industry? Will I be able to get a loan to buy a home? And the list of concerns go on.
As
we get older we realise that life goes ‘pear shaped’ from time to time. It’s an
inescapable reality that reveals the soft underbelly of our doubts and fears.
Security in all areas of life is little more than a fine thread, yet we delude
ourselves into thinking it’s thick wire rope.
Part
of the reason for this delusion is the deep need for hope. It’s something that
every human on the planet needs. It’s that moment in personal darkness when a
pinprick of light makes it possible to face the unsettled realities we find
ourselves in. We can’t live without it.
In
recent years I have had to unpack what ‘hope’ is. For some reason I lived with
the belief that ‘hope’ is a feeling that everything will turn out well. Pain
will stop, suffering will cease and every issue will be solved some time soon.
I have come to understand that this is not the case.
Real
hope has no concept of tomorrow being better. It is not framed on the belief
that the future will turn out well because because the financial institutions
sort themselves out. True human hope is not premised on such material images.
Real
hope is tougher than that. Real hope is an attitude of living which provokes us
to see things in new ways. It is
not the flaky conviction that life will turn out well, but the certainty that life
will make sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is akin to a night-light in
dark times. Life might be difficult, but it is OK.
You
see hope only describes a life based on another word - trust. It’s is the
foundation of all relationships. Trust is intensely human and is a gift from
one person to another. Trust is based on the knowledge that you are loved and
that love is enough to live and die for. Everything else is secondary.
Though
I have no knowledge of Austin Hemmings and his family, I get the impression
that he was a man with this kind of hope and trust. Yet his love and trust of
family and others was not simply based on his upbringing. For the most part it
was birthed through his lifelong trust in the God who loves us more than we can
comprehend.
Jesus
is fully that God. Yet, despite having all the power of the universe crackling
at his finger tips, Jesus makes no promise of a comfortable life for his
followers. He simply claims that if we trust him by following him, the event we
call ‘life’ does make sense – no matter the circumstances.