At the Hope for Life event on Saturday 14th March, Dot Buckley (a member of our Church family) shared her thoughts and experiences of the Christian hope that changed her life. Read more here:
What makes you hopeful? Why is hope so important? Where do you see hope in the world?
When we look around at the current state of the world we see largely brokenness and despair, conflict and pain. We see the chaos of war and upheaval, a questioning of fundamental values that we have taken for granted until recent times: democracy, the rule of law, the value of truth over lies.
But this is not something new. As a young teenager growing up in the 1980s, I felt overwhelmed at the idea of a world out of control, at the mercy of the pressing of a nuclear button. My parents were German, and although I was born and brought up in the UK, our annual visits to Oma in Berlin meant that the Berlin Wall was something I was very familiar with. This wasn’t even the height of the cold war, and in retrospect seems more like a mere chill than an actual cold. But the bottom line in my mind was: if death is the end of me, then what’s the point of anything? If there’s no meaning outside of me, then there’s certainly no meaning to be found inside of me.
I struggled with this in my teenage years, in sixth form, during my A-levels. I went on later to study French and Russian at uni, where I enjoyed the literature as well as the language side. At school, I did French at A-level, and we studied Albert Camus’ novel ‘L’Étranger’ (known as ‘The Stranger’ in English). It’s written like an experiment in absurdist ideas taken to their logical conclusion: life is meaningless, and none of our actions can be said to be any ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than any others. Human based hope is seen as ludicrous.
And yet somehow, as human beings we cling on to hope. I found a remarkable example of that recently in Viktor Frankl’s extraordinary book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’. Frankl saw meaning as the primary human drive. Our pursuit of what we find meaningful is what alone gives us hope. It is the ‘Why?’ of our whole lives.
Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist and holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences of life as a prisoner for three years in the Auschwitz concentration camp. He describes poignantly those prisoners who gave up on life, who had lost all hope for a future. They were the ones who were inevitably the first to die. They died less from lack of food or medicine than from lack of hope, lack of something to live for. Frankl observed a spike in deaths towards the end of December 1944, which he attributed to a widespread, naive hope among prisoners that they would be liberated by Christmas; when this did not happen, their resistance collapsed.
The more I’ve reflected on it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that HOPE is fuel for our souls; it’s what we need to keep going day by day, and to flourish.
This is a good point at which to consider how we might define hope. One definition of hope is that it is an expectation for the future. That idea of expectation is a measure based on the best evidence we have.
If we go for a purely human version of what that hope is based on, it works a bit like my experience as a teacher. We regularly have to draw up MLO grades for our students (most likely outcomes): the grade the student is ‘most likely to get’ in their terminal exam. We base these predictions on years of experience and insight gathered over generations of students passing through our hands.
It’s a measure of an expectation that takes into account: students’ work and attitude, their results, plus an intuition about how they will cope when it comes to revision and the exam itself. In summary: it’s based on attitude and achievement. That’s the material we carve this ‘expectation’ out of, using our professional tools: our judgement. So we’re giving students HOPE that their work NOW will have a meaningful, worthwhile and positive outcome: we’re giving them a ‘Why?’ for their efforts.
But this is diametrically opposed to the Christian hope, which is carved out of a quite different material.
Let’s strip it back first: it’s NOT based on how good I am, my deeds or words, my intellectual understanding of a set of principles or teaching, or how often I read my Bible and pray. These might all be good things in and of themselves, but they get in the way when it comes to the Christian hope. We’re not talking about some kind of ‘grade boundary’ that I have to get across; not some ‘merit list’ that I need to climb up.
What I’m thinking about comes from Jesus’ Sermon on the mount, and what are called the Beatitudes. You may be familiar with the Beatitudes; they are a list of Jesus’ descriptions of what it means to be blessed. The first Beatitude says:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’
(Matthew 5:3).
Jesus turns our values upside down: he says it’s the lowly, the humble, the poor in spirit, those who recognise that they are dependent on grace from God entirely who are ‘lifted up’, and who are blessed. They can face the future with confidence, because they have a certain hope.
On the face of it, being ‘poor in spirit’ sounds more like giving up on hope. But Jesus is here guiding us to seek hope not in ourselves, but in him.
I think experience shows that when our hope is based on ourselves we find it dashed by the broken world we live in. We have already commented on that brokenness, but the Bible shows us there’s a reason for it. The Bible says we were made in the image of our Creator, of a God who made the world as good and beautiful. But something went wrong. Humanity rebelled against its creator; the world is out of tune with its created intention. We all let God down, we let ourselves down. We see it in the scratchiness of our relationships with one another, in the way communities often seek to dominate one another; we see it in the devastation of international conflict. We have hit the low point of our consideration of the topic of Hope.
But the Bible also says God has the solution: God sent Jesus to deal with the evil resulting from human rebellion. That is what the death of Jesus at the cross was all about, paying the price for our rebellion. And we know it worked because God brought Jesus back from death at the resurrection, and raised him to life, eternal life. Jesus promises that that life can be ours. He says:
‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die’
(John 11:25).
Death won’t take away that blessing from God; his love goes on forever. And we can be certain of that, because Jesus died and rose again from the dead.
If we are to believe, then evidence of the resurrection is vital and the Bible recognises that: it contains many eye-witness accounts, starting with a small group of women, early that Easter Sunday morning, at the empty tomb. This is one of the greatest signs for me that the Bible can’t possibly be made up: women’s testimony was disregarded by the culture of the day as unreliable, and yet Jesus appeared first to a group of his female disciples!
Our faith is based on attested facts, and a rock-solid living Lord Jesus. Jesus is described as a sure and steadfast anchor, our certain Hope.
Let’s think again about the Easter story, and the account of the death of Jesus. Following the crucifixion, the twelve disciples were filled with despair, fear, hopelessness. The men locked themselves into a room together, terrified of what might happen next.
It had all ‘gone wrong’ for them. They had been following this wonderful rabbi Jesus of Nazareth for three years. They had seen healings, heard his teachings, witnessed amazing miracles, including people being raised from the dead…and now this: an ignominious death, and (the absolute final word) burial. Their hope was GONE. For three years: all the bad things were coming untrue. Now there was just a shameful end.
But then – a total transformation, when Jesus appeared in that locked room, and spoke to them. In the subsequent days and weeks after the resurrection, many people saw and touched the risen Lord Jesus; the disciples even ate breakfast with him on the beach on one occasion. They watched him ascend to heaven, and soon after, they received the Holy Spirit who transformed them from a frightened huddle to a growing band willing to die for their faith. They had experienced a fundamental change in perspective on life: they now BELONGED to Jesus. And that is the pattern for all who believe and trust in Jesus. The account is there in the New Testament part of our Bibles.
Over the centuries, many people have undertaken to dig into the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, for his empty tomb, and have come away with changed lives.
My life was transformed when I was 18: I became a Christian, and everything changed! Now let me be clear: I didn’t ‘become a Christian’ like I ‘became a teacher’, i.e. a pathway that I chose for myself. Looking back, that was probably what I was anticipating would happen. I wanted to ‘become a Christian’ to add some new, spiritual ‘side’ to my life, that I felt was missing. I guess I wanted a new, ‘better’ way to live my life. But as I read the Bible, and tried to pray, something quite different happened: what actually happened was that I met Jesus. Jesus came into my life, and a whole new life started for me.
This was something that I just hadn’t expected: becoming a Christian wasn’t ultimately about assenting to a set of beliefs, or following certain teachings. Becoming a Christian meant a fundamental change of identity, because it meant that I became a child of God.
When Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, he gave them the words of what we know as the ‘Lord’s prayer’. In addressing God, he didn’t use any of the wonderful titles of God that are in the Old Testament: El Shaddai (God Almighty) or Adonai (My Lord/Master), but simply ‘Our Father’. Jesus leads us in praying to our heavenly father; we’re brought into a family relationship with God!
When I was 21, I got married to Peter, who was then a widower with three young children. By getting married to Peter, I automatically adopted his children Jo, David and Steph, and became their mum. During the ceremony, I made my own promise to the children that I would love them as my own. Many of the wedding guests commented that there should have been a health warning before that emotional moment! Then, after a few years, Jacob was born.
In neither case did the children involved have any choice in the matter; they certainly didn’t DO anything to become part of our family. The Bible talks about our adoption into the family of God, with all the immeasurable privileges that that status brings: valued, cared for, loved; we belong.
That’s the hope, the assurance, the confidence that I have found as a Christian. Because of the resurrection I know Jesus is alive now, and with me by his Spirit.
It’s at times of greatest need that I’m most aware of His presence. When the promises of God’s word bring about real change. God is with us, and he hears us and answers our prayers. That is a huge privilege as I speak to God in prayer, day by day, about the ordinary things of life as well as the big things.
Recently, my family went through a very challenging time. What we believe, and what we hope in is really put to the test when you’re facing the reality of the shadow of death. Before Christmas, we had the devastating news that our 39-year old son-in-law Matt had been diagnosed with a brain tumour.
This had a huge effect on Matt’s wife Steph (our daughter) and their three: our grandchildren. Seeing healthy, fit Matt in a hospital bed made me realise that I live my life day by day as though I’m never going to die. Matt went from being seemingly completely healthy to facing a potentially life-altering operation to remove the tumour, with no clear idea of how, or if the tumour itself might be treated.
In the weeks leading up to the operation, Matt and Steph had many difficult conversations. He spent time planning his own funeral service, and writing cards to his children. We prayed; Matt’s family prayed, their church family prayed, as did many other dear friends. The operation was a total success, the tumour was fully removed and Matt is fully healed. It was so far beyond what any of us were expecting, and just an absolute miracle from a loving heavenly Father.
Let me tell you about Matt’s journey through this extraordinary time: at the initial diagnosis, he was in shock. Of course he thought about his own death, but his main concern was for his family, and in particular for his children. He realised that he was facing a huge question: ‘Do I trust that God can look after my precious family, even when I’m not here?’
Once he recognised that, he realised what the answer had to be: as a Christian, Matt knew that God’s promises are firm and sure, and his love never fails. He could commit his family to God, knowing, not least, that God had provided for Peter and the three children, following the death of his first wife back in 1987.
Now I’m under no illusion: life is hard, and the Bible does not permit us to expect otherwise. We all experience pain and suffering, and the death of loved ones. As I have experienced the decline and end of both of my parents’ lives in the last two years, I have to say that only Jesus has the answer to death. And so to talk about hope in the Christian sense is not talking about hope in someTHING (eg: our good works, probability, ‘fate’); this is a category error! Instead, that hope is in someONE.
I mentioned earlier that the Bible describes Jesus as the anchor for our souls. The tighter you pull, the more it holds – true in the sea, and true in my relationship with Jesus. Hope that sees through the curtain, to life beyond death. Hope that is so strong it reaches ‘backwards’ from there into our lives here, and transforms our hearts through hope, and through assurance of belonging to him.