Amos 3:12-4:5; 2 Peter 3:1-10; Matthew 21:23-32
“. . . in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!” (2 Pet. 3:3-4). How much more in our day? It’s not a question just for scoffers. It’s hard to see the world as it is, as it has been, and imagine a future that is different. We might imagine it without really believing it is possible. We might especially give up on the hope that God will do this, even as we become more and more knowledgeable about how to fight disease, poverty, and injustice. We have the tools we need, even if we don’t use them or misuse them; who needs God? We don’t expect the heavens to “pass away with a loud noise” unless we blow up the earth. So what is our hope? Where is our hope?
Not in ourselves. For ever since our ancestors died, we have been a race of distorted perceptions and appetites, with mental capacities and technologies that outstrip our spiritual maturity. We are children playing, not with fire, but with nuclear weapons.
Our hope must lie in God, in the Spirit that teaches and comforts and strengthens us to do God’s will. Our hope cannot, need not lie in a Daddy God who will take care of everything, who will avenge us or punish us; our hope lies in a God who knows what it’s like to be human and invites us to become divine, to step up as partners in the healing of the world.
The shift toward hoping rather than self-reliance is the beginning. Seeing our role in the disasters of the world, seeing our inability to end them by our own volition, leads us to repent and turn to the Source of life. Like the “tax collectors and prostitutes” who turned, we can still find and participate in God’s realm. But do it now! Don’t wait. We’ve all had enough pain.
Where is your hope today?
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