My Hope Is in the Lord

The freedom of discovering that nothing created was ever meant to carry the weight of the heart

“He is happy who is helped by Jacob’s God,

whose hope is in the Lord his God.”

— Psalm 145

There comes a strange freedom when the heart finally discovers that nothing in this world can save it.

Not because the world is evil. Not because people do not matter. Not because our responsibilities, loves, promises, sufferings, and histories are without meaning. But because none of them is God.

Perhaps much of our weariness comes from asking created things to bear a weight they were never meant to carry.

We ask circumstances to give us peace.

We ask institutions to give us security.

We ask other people to understand us.

We ask the future to reassure us.

We ask our plans to tell us that everything will be well.

And then the Psalmist says with almost frightening simplicity:

Put no trust in princes,

in mortal men in whom there is no help.

Take their breath, they return to clay

and their plans that day come to nothing.

Everything passes.

Every human arrangement passes. Every judgment passes. Every reputation passes. Every institution passes. Every argument passes. Every plan carefully constructed against the uncertainty of tomorrow passes.

And I will pass.

This need not be a dark thought.

It may be one of the most liberating truths we can receive.

For if everything created passes, then I am free to stop demanding eternity from it.

The Psalm does not leave us standing among ruins. Immediately it turns our gaze elsewhere:

He is happy who is helped by Jacob’s God,

whose hope is in the Lord his God.

Here is blessedness.

Not having solved everything.

Not knowing what comes next.

Not finally arranging life so perfectly that nothing can disturb us.

Blessed is the man whose hope is in the Lord.

I think I am only beginning to understand this.

There have been times when I imagined peace would come when some uncertainty was resolved, some path became clear, some door opened, some question received an answer. Yet another question always waits behind the first. Another uncertainty appears. Another thing that seemed permanent reveals itself to be fragile.

The heart cannot rest there.

It was never meant to.

Psalm 61 says:

In God alone is my soul at rest;

my help comes from him.

In God alone.

Those words become more beautiful as everything else becomes less certain.

Perhaps this is why the stripping of life can become mercy.

What initially feels like loss may reveal the places where we had quietly placed our hope. One by one the supports disappear, until the soul finds itself standing before God with empty hands.

And discovers that empty hands are enough.

The Desert Fathers knew this freedom. They fled not because creation was contemptible but because they wanted to discover what remained when everything unnecessary had fallen away.

God remained.

Christ remained.

Prayer remained.

Love remained.

And strangely, when nothing remained to possess, they became capable of receiving everything as gift.

This is the freedom for which my own heart increasingly longs.

Not the freedom of having no responsibilities.

Not the freedom of escaping suffering.

Not the freedom of arranging life according to my own will.

But the freedom of needing nothing except God in order to have peace.

The Grail Psalter returns to this again and again.

The Lord is my light and my help;

whom shall I fear?

And:

I am sure I shall see the Lord’s goodness

in the land of the living.

Hope in him, hold firm and take heart.

Hope in the Lord!

And again:

My soul is waiting for the Lord.

I count on his word.

My soul is longing for the Lord

more than watchman for daybreak.

This is not resignation.

It is hope purified of demand.

I do not need to know what tomorrow will bring in order to believe in the goodness of God.

I do not need every human judgment to favor me.

I do not need every misunderstanding corrected.

I do not need every door to open.

I do not even need my life to take the form I once imagined it would.

I need Him.

And He is here.

The extraordinary thing about Psalm 145 is that the God in whom we place our hope is not distant from human suffering. He enters precisely where our strength fails.

The Lord sets prisoners free.

The Lord gives sight to the blind.

The Lord raises up those who are bowed down.

This is the God upon whom the Psalmist tells us to stake everything.

The One who bends toward the bowed down.

Perhaps, then, freedom begins when I stop asking the world to free me.

Peace begins when I stop asking circumstances to give me peace.

Hope begins when I stop requiring tomorrow to justify today.

There is only this moment before God.

This breath.

This prayer.

This person before me who needs love.

This small obedience.

This opportunity to say the Name of Jesus once more.

Everything else can remain unresolved.

I will praise the Lord all my days,

make music to my God while I live.

That may finally be enough of a rule of life.

Praise Him while I live.

Love those whom He places before me.

Carry what He gives me today.

Release what He has not given me to carry.

Do not grasp at tomorrow.

Do not make an idol of yesterday.

Do not seek from human beings what only God can give.

And when fear begins constructing its elaborate futures, return quietly to the Psalm:

My hope is in the Lord my God.

Not in what happens.

Not in what others decide.

Not in what remains or disappears.

Not even in my ability to understand the path.

In the Lord.

There is a great silence on the other side of those words.

Perhaps this is what the saints discovered: that freedom is not finally the possession of a man who has escaped every constraint. Freedom is the condition of the heart that has discovered its treasure cannot be taken from it.

Christ cannot be taken from us.

And therefore the deepest place within us can remain at peace.

Alive or dead, I am the Lord’s.

Known or forgotten, I am the Lord’s.

Consoled or desolate, I am the Lord’s.

Certain or uncertain, I am the Lord’s.

Everything returns to clay.

But the Lord remains.

The Lord will reign for ever,

Sion’s God, from age to age.

So let the heart become quiet.

Let the plans fall silent.

Let tomorrow remain where it belongs—in the hands of God.

There is nothing left to secure.

There is Someone to love.

And perhaps joy begins precisely there.

Not when life finally gives us what we hoped for,

but when God Himself becomes our hope.

And our hope becomes praise.

My soul, give praise to the Lord;

I will praise the Lord all my days.