Faith in ... the Future?

Or... in the God who holds it?

(or maybe more precisely, in the God who is perfectly prepared for it, and walks into it with us).

Regular readers know that I have thought out loud here often about hope and how it works. It seems to be such a prevalent theme in today's post-modern world (as you might expect, given the inherent tendency in post-modernism toward disillusionment and despair), ranging from Jurgen Moltmann's "Theology of Hope" in 1964, to Barack Obama's "Audacity of Hope" some 40 years later.

Hope is the antidote to despair (as long as it is genuine, and not false hope which crushes the spirit), and hope for the future is what today's desperate world needs most.

On Sunday the guest preacher (a woman from within the congregation, sort of like me two weeks earlier), told her story; it was both tragic and beautiful. She referenced a couple of quotations about hope, which I really liked.

"Hope is the quiet and sometimes incessant call to dream for the future. Biblical hope is substantial faith regarding the future."

----- Dan Alendar, "The Healing Path"

I get this. The first phrase is great. The call to hope is often quiet; sometimes too quiet during times of desperation, when what you want hope to do is shout at you, so you can find it in the dark and grab the lifeline that it is throwing toward you. But even though quiet, it is also often incessant, like a beacon which continues to attract your attention and toward which you can direct yourself when lost; this is a good thing, because we don't often latch to it on the first time. Or the second, or third, or...

I like the second phrase just as much. I have found that there is a difference between hope... and Biblical hope. Hope can be desperate, and placed in something un-faith-ful (in the sense of not being reliable enough for our hope or trust to be well-placed there). But when hope is rooted in God, and in line with what's taught in Scripture, the result can (and should) be a faith regarding the future that is substantive and sure. Not certainty, mind you, but a confident hope founded on a trustworthy God.

The second quote put it more simply:

"She was scared silly, but she kept buying tickets"

----- greeting card (with a picture of a ferris wheel on the front)

:) I like this, too. And it's often how I feel as I face today and tomorrow. If I don't have hope, I don't want to get on the ride. Too scary. Better to step aside. But no matter how scared I am, when hope is strong, I keep right on buying tickets... to the future.