Hope in Hopeless Times
February 16, 2009
Photo by Digital Plus Art &…
Testimony by Becky Colvin, February 14, 2009
A Dream Deferred
What happens to a dream deferred?
does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore–
And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I was at Upper Columbia Academy. It was my senior year in high school. And we had a costume party. We were to come dressed as ourselves—ourselves ten years in the future. I hadn’t decided on a major for college. But I knew I liked reading, so I decided to come as a librarian. I pulled my hair up in a bun, stuck my glasses on the end of my nose, put on some of my more frumpy clothing, and did one last thing.
I may not have known what I wanted to do in my career, but I’d always known one thing. I knew I wanted kids. So I took one of my pillows, folded it in half, and stuck it underneath my sweater. I went to the party as a pregnant librarian. I joked that my other 8 children were at home with my husband.
All of us came dressed in our dreams that day. Hopes for relationships and families and careers and financial success.
I’m sure some of those dreams came true. Kristen and Dave did get married. Doug probably did become a con man and make his millions. Brian became a preacher, Carrie became a missionary. I took that love of reading and became an English teacher. But there were other hopes that didn’t come to be. And I never got pregnant.
Within the last few months I’ve had a crisis of faith. It’s been simmering under the surface for a while, but I think the heat turned up a little on September 29, when the stock market sand 777 points in one day. I’m sure I contributed to it by checking our retirement balance online on an almost daily basis and watching our earthly treasure go up in smoke.
A little fuel was added to the fire over Thanksgiving, as I spent time with my pregnant sister, my baby sister, six years younger than me. And the dull ache became even more painful as I held my brand new niece just over a month ago.
But honestly, it really was no one thing. It’s just that my hopes, and your hopes, too, kept taking hits. I know of too many dreams, just here in this room, that seem to be indefinitely deferred.
- The hope that your house would sell.
- The hope that your company wouldn’t go under.
- The hope that your loan would be approved.
- The hope that your new business venture would be worth the risk.
- The hope that your son, your daughter would get better.
- That this treatment would solve your health problem.
- That you would get the job.
- That work would come in.
- That this time the happy news would be YOURS.
Some of our hopes have come to pass. Others seem to have been answered with a resounding “No.”
When earthly doors slam in our faces, sometimes it feels like the door of heaven has slammed shut, too. Or worse yet, sometimes we wonder if there’s even anyone there at all.
We wouldn’t care so much, I don’t think, if we didn’t feel like good things had been promised to us. If we hadn’t read Jeremiah 29:11, where God says, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Or if we hadn’t heard Matthew 7:8-11 a million times:
Ask, and you will receive. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you. You parents, if your child asks for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask Him?
At least for me, those scriptures make unanswered prayers hurt more, not less. If I believed God did not have an active interest in my life, his apparent absence would be more bearable.
Recently I watched a movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Ben Stein was curious why science is so afraid of Creationism and intelligent design that they’ve essentially outlawed dissent in colleges and universities. The movie was meant to build faith. To support the idea of a Heavenly Creator.
But one interview sent a knife to my already hurting heart.
Ben Stein asked an avowed atheist: “What if there IS a God, and after you die, you meet him. What would you say to Him then?” And the atheist answered, “I would ask Him: If you wanted us to know you, why did you make yourself so hard to find?” For days afterward, I couldn’t get that question out of my mind.
And in the following days I descended into doubt and disbelief and hopelessness because I couldn’t reconcile my beliefs about God with what I’ve been seeing recently in my life and my friends’ lives and in the world. I started to ask Him: “Can you really exist if my hopes and dreams don’t seem to matter to you?”
There are things I believe about God. I believe He loves me. I believe He is strong and powerful.
I believe he commands his angels to watch over and protect us. And yet, our friends were severely injured in a car accident two years ago.
I believe He is a God of health and miraculous healing. But then this last year we watched as our young friend Esther fought a losing fight with anemia and graft-versus-host disease.
I believe that God can supply all our needs. But I can’t even count the number of people I care about who have lost jobs or homes or hopes in these economic times.
I believe he loves me and blesses those who obey and love Him. And yet almost twenty years later one of my sweetest hearts desires, to grow a human life, continues to go unanswered.
So what do we do? Where do we go when our hopes are unfulfilled, when our dreams are deferred?
I have to tell you, I’m not all the way back yet. I don’t think I’ll understand suffering until I see the face of God .
I don’t have some great theological answer about how to have hope in hopeless times. All I can tell you is what I did.
- I told God how I was really feeling.
- I listened to what God said about Himself through his word and through music.
- And I returned to the stories of my faith.
The first break in how I was feeling happened when I opened up my heart to the Lord. I spilled it all. My fears, my resentments, my questions, my doubts.
Next, I listened to what God said about Himself.
Four months ago, someone got ahold of our credit card number and charged more than 200 dollars on Itunes over the course of two days. We cancelled the card, got a new one in the mail, and filed a charge dispute. But everything seemed to go wrong. They sent acknowledgement of only ONE disputed amount of $50, not the full $200. They didn’t receive our letter, our faxes to them got misdirected. I spent hours with them on the phone trying to get the situation resolved. Larry was convinced that it would never be taken care of and we could just kiss those 200 dollars good-bye.
But I kept coming back to one thing. Citibank’s words about themselves. On one statement, they had in bold print said, “You will never have to pay for fraudulent charges.”
So despite all evidence to the contrary, I believed what they said about themselves. While I waited on hold. When my husband had lost faith. Every month when I paid our bill minus $229.05. I reminded myself: “You will never have to pay for fraudulent charges.” And that faith pulled me through when our situation looked hopeless.
On our last Master Card statement, the charges had been reversed.
It may fly against logic to have gone to the word of God when I was doubting his existence, but that’s exactly what pulled me out of the pit of discouragement. One late night I went to Bible Gateway.com and did a word search on “hope.” These are only a fraction of the verses I found.
Psalm 25:2-3 (New International Version)
2 in you I trust, O my God.
Do not let me be put to shame,
nor let my enemies triumph over me.3 No one whose hope is in you
will ever be put to shame,Psalm 31:24 (New International Version)
24 Be strong and take heart,
all you who hope in the LORD.Psalm 33:18-22 (New International Version)
18 But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love,19 to deliver them from death
and keep them alive in famine.20 We wait in hope for the LORD;
he is our help and our shield.21 In him our hearts rejoice,
for we trust in his holy name.22 May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
even as we put our hope in you.
Hebrews 10:23 (New International Version)
23Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
Romans 4:18-26 (New International Version)
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.
I can’t say I didn’t shed some tears as I read, but I felt a comfort deep inside me. I realized that the hopes that were failing me were earthly hopes. Hopes for financial comfort, for a generous retirement. For a picture-perfect family, for things to be the way I imagined them, for life to fit MY will. But in scripture after scripture, God reminded me that he was faithful, and that even when I was hoping against hope I still needed to be fully persuaded that God loved me unfailingly and that He had the power to do what he had promised.
I also listened to what God said about himself through music. Countless songs spoke to me, but two in particular were total redemption songs for me: Tenth Avenue North’s “By Your Side” and Jars of Clay’s “God Will Lift Up Your Head.”
Why are you striving these days?
Why are you trying to earn grace?
Why are you crying? Let me lift up your face.
Just don’t turn away.
Why are you looking for love?
Why are you searching as if I’m not enough?
To where will you go, child? Tell me, where will you run?
I’ll be by your side wherever you fall
In the dead of night whenever you call
Please don’t fight these hands that are holding you.
My hands are holding you.
Give to the wind your fear
Hope and be undismayed
God hears your sighs and counts your tears
God will lift up your headLeave to His sovereign sway
To choose and to command
Then shall we wandering on His way
Know how wise and how strong is His handThrough waves and clouds and storms,
He gently clears the way
Wait because in His time,so shall this night soon end in joy
The third thing that helped rebuild faith for me was returning to my own faith journey. I re-read the story about God’s obvious miraculous work and incredible kindness in helping us adopt our son Jeremy. And then I read my sermon from Easter—and that reminded me of my friend Mardene.
Mardene and I were student missionaries together with our friend Sher. We were out on Arno, in the Marshall Islands, three girls in our early 20’s teaching school for a year. We were the only three English speakers on the island. A ham radio with a failing battery was our only immediate link to the school in the next island over. And letters, delivered once a week by boat or prop plane were the only way we heard from family and friends.
Getting letters was an event. It didn’t matter whether we were starvingly hungry or extremely tired, when letters arrived we would sort through them and take our precious pieces of home someplace quiet to read. Usually there would be a letter from our parents, but we always had something from our boyfriends. Until, two weeks in a row, Mardene didn’t get anything from Jason. That first week, we were able to reassure her. It was just a fluke. Jason hadn’t gotten his letter into the mail on time. It would definitely come next week. When the next week came and there was still no letter from him, she was overwhelmed with anxiety. She got herself so worked up that she convinced herself something awful had happened to him. “He’s dead. I know it.” She announced. “My parents are just trying to protect me.”
She loved Jason. She believed Jason loved her. And she had not heard from him for two weeks. And she could not reconcile those two things. Her reasoning was: “If Jason loves me, he would not let two weeks go by without communicating with me. He would not leave me feeling lonely and neglected out here. So something awful must have happened to him. He must be dead.”
He wasn’t dead, as the following week brought mail from him again.
I have often chuckled thinking about my poor friend, imagining her boyfriend dead because she hadn’t heard from him. But obviously, I’m not that much different.
And as I re-read my sermon, I had to laugh at myself. Here I was, after so many years of a real relationship with God, after repeated evidences of his existence and his care for me, almost positive he didn’t exist, that he was dead just because I haven’t heard from Him recently, because the good gifts I have hoped he would give me have not arrived yet. Any of you feeling the same way?
Laughing at myself was a bit of a turning point. I could feel myself deciding that my life is richer because of belief. I could never choose a life without hope. Even if hope seems foolish.
And slowly, slowly, I have started to sense the sweetness of God’s presence near me again.
The scripture that we have chosen to base our Connexions service on is First Corinthians 13-15. Chapter 13, verse 13 says: And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Have you ever wondered why love is the most important? I have. But after this recent experience, I think I understand. Hope is important. Hope is the anxious expectation that God will show up. Faith is important. Faith is what we fall back on when our hopes don’t happen.
But love? Love is the comfort when everything we hope for is taken from us. When the thing we fear most happens. When our hopes are dashed. When even our faith fails us. The love of friends who listen, who help us out, who will not let us starve or be homeless. The love of spouses, who promise to weather this storm together.
And the Love of God. Who says, I am a father who cares for you. Who has plans for your future. Who loves to give good gifts. I’ve held you before, and I’m holding you through this storm, too.
I wanted to leave you with one last quote I found while doing my research on hope. It’s not from a Christian author—it’s also from a poet—Emily Dickinson. She writes: “To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.”
I know our stresses will not soon come to an end. I know there are a lot of dreams that will continue to be deferred, a lot of hopes that may not happen. But I know we’re going to be okay if we’ve got each other.
And we’ll keep hoping, and believing, and loving, until this world is over and we see the face of God.
If you enjoyed this post, be sure to read the rest from this author. Janine is a wife and mother, professional photographer, and friend of souls. 
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Becky,
Thank you so much for sharing with us this weekend. It was a true blessing!
Chad & Heather
In my most hopeless moment, when I asked God why (actually I was telling God off),, he showed me John 9:3: “This happened so that the works of God may be dispalyed in your life.” God isn’t the architect of the bad things that happen to us, but He can confound the devil by using them to display his works. .. in us!!
He will display His works in us, not be restoring our income, or giving us that new car, or making our loved one survive, although He may do these, too. I am finding out He has a far greater work to display in our lives, one of lasting value and usefulness. Are we willing to wait on Him, in Him?
And thank you, Becky for your honest, timely, meaningful, and helpful message to us last Sabbath. A great first step in fulfillment the mission of First Serve.