Lent: Keep it simple

An Emerging Hope

Psalm 62:5-8 Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honour depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.

During this penultimate week of Lent we are going to look at our hope as Christians. But what is the essence of Christian Hope. Notice the word ‘hope” in Psalm 62:5 above. The Hebrew term literally means “a cord, as an attachment.” Every one of us is hanging onto something or someone for security. If it’s someone or something other than God alone, we’re hanging on by a thread – the wrong thread.

 “It has been said that Charles Wesley's hymns always begin on earth and end in heaven. So it is with John Wesley's theology. He was firmly convinced of the coming day of Christ, which is not yet, but toward which humankind, with the whole creation, is moving. For Wesley, it was necessary to stress God's ultimate victory; but it was also important to affirm the penultimate reality of God's presence, now experienced as life that is drawn to God in increasingly focused love. John Wesley had a doctrine of final things, an eschatology, in which God's kingdom is being presently realised even as it points toward a consummating future. The Christian lives with the lively hope that God, who has begun a good thing, will fulfil it in the day of Jesus Christ.” ——From Practical Divinity by Thomas A. Langford

One definition for hope is: To look forward to with confidence or expectation. How confident are we do we look for with expectation although we may look forward through a glass darkly as 1 Corinthians 13:12 puts it, “but then face to face: now we know in part; but then shall we know even as also we are known.”

Here is one of Charles Wesley’s hymns of hope that we shall use throughout this week’s thoughts.

In hope against all human hope,

Self-desperate, I believe--

Thy quickening word shall raise me up,

Thou wilt thy Spirit give.