When There Is Nothing Left to Hope For

The hope that does not depend upon what happens next

“This hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”

— Romans 5:5

There is a hope that belongs to this world.

We hope that circumstances will improve. That illness will pass. That those we love will remain with us. That misunderstandings will be resolved. That doors will open. That the future will eventually reveal some hidden coherence and allow us to say, Now I understand why all of this happened.

Such hopes are not wrong. They arise naturally from the heart. We carry them before God because there is nowhere else to carry them.

But they are not yet the hope of which the Apostle speaks.

For every earthly hope can disappoint us.

The door may remain closed.

The illness may not pass.

The person we love may be taken from us.

The misunderstanding may never be resolved.

The life we carefully built may disappear almost without warning.

And there are moments when God permits the soul to discover this—not as an idea, but as something lived. One support after another is removed until we begin to understand how much of what we called hope was actually our desire for a particular future.

We hoped because we could still imagine an outcome.

Christian hope begins somewhere deeper.

It begins when we can no longer imagine one.

The fathers of the desert understood this strange country. They fled precisely those things by which human beings ordinarily assure themselves that life is secure: possessions, reputation, position, explanations, control. They entered the desert not because they despised creation, but because they wanted to discover whether God was enough.

And the desert answered them with silence.

There the heart slowly learned that faith is not confidence that tomorrow will resemble what we desire.

Faith is standing before God when tomorrow has become completely opaque.

This is why Paul says something astonishing:

We have obtained access to this grace in which we stand.

Stand.

Not understand.

Not foresee.

Not control.

Stand.

There may come a time in a human life when this is almost the whole of the spiritual life: simply to remain before God.

The world around us may be changing beyond recognition. Things once thought permanent may be passing away. We may find ourselves unable to preserve what we love or to determine what comes next. Even the words that once consoled us may become thin and powerless.

Yet beneath all of this something remains untouched.

God is.

And I am before Him.

He knows me.

Perhaps this is why genuine hope often appears to the world almost indistinguishable from poverty. It possesses no evidence with which to defend itself. It cannot prove that things will improve. It does not know whether the road ahead leads toward restoration or further stripping.

It simply refuses to make circumstances the measure of God’s fidelity.

This is the hope that does not disappoint.

Not because nothing terrible will happen.

Christianity has never promised this.

Christ did not tell His disciples that the world would spare them because they loved Him. He showed them instead a Cross and then entered it Himself.

The hope of the Christian is therefore something infinitely more terrible and beautiful than optimism:

Even here, God can be found.

Even here.

Even if everything changes.

Even if what I feared comes upon me.

Even if I lose what I thought I needed in order to remain myself.

Even if the world I knew collapses around me.

God has not disappeared.

Indeed, it may be precisely when the structures upon which we unconsciously depended begin to fall that we discover the foundation beneath them.

And the foundation is not an explanation.

It is a Presence.

This is why Paul does not say that hope does not disappoint because events eventually vindicate us. He says that hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

The proof is already within us.

Not proof as argument.

Presence as gift.

Something has been poured into the human heart which catastrophe cannot reach.

The world may take possessions.

Time may take strength.

Death may take those we love.

Circumstances may take reputation, security, place, usefulness, even the identity by which we once knew ourselves.

But none of these things can enter that secret place where God has poured Himself into the heart.

The elders knew this.

This is why they could speak of peace while surrounded by uncertainty. Their peace did not come from favorable circumstances. It came from having descended beneath circumstances altogether.

They had discovered the place where Christ waits.

And perhaps much of the spiritual life consists in being led there.

At first unwillingly.

Then trembling.

Then silently.

Until finally the soul understands that what seemed like the loss of everything was also the revelation of the One who cannot be lost.

Then prayer becomes very simple.

There may be no great thoughts.

No spiritual sweetness.

No certainty about tomorrow.

Sometimes there may be nothing left but the Name.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.

And perhaps that is enough.

The Name breathed in darkness.

The Name spoken beside the bed of someone we love.

The Name carried through bewilderment.

The Name whispered when every other word has exhausted itself.

The Name when we cannot see the road.

The Name when there is no road we can see.

Here hope becomes almost indistinguishable from surrender.

Not resignation.

Not passivity.

But the quiet consent of the creature who has ceased demanding that God reveal the future before he will entrust himself to Him.

We do what love asks today.

We care for the person placed before us.

We repent.

We forgive.

We endure.

We pray.

And we leave tomorrow where it has always been:

in the hands of God.

The world may collapse around such a person and still something within him remains standing.

Not because he is strong.

Because grace is.

Perhaps this is the deepest meaning of Paul’s words:

the grace in which we stand.

When everything else falls, grace remains.

And standing there, stripped of our imagined futures, we may finally discover the hope that cannot disappoint.

Not:

I know everything will turn out as I desire.

But:

Whatever comes, Christ will be there.

And deeper still:

Christ is here.

Then even the darkness becomes a place of encounter.

Even uncertainty becomes prayer.

Even loss can become an opening through which eternity enters.

The Christian does not hope because he knows what tomorrow will bring.

He hopes because he knows Who will be there when tomorrow comes.

And should everything else pass away—

He remains.

And because He remains,

we may remain in Him.