IN FAITH HOPE IS FOUND

On August 28, 1963 Dr. Martin Luther King JR. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and articulated his dream. The dream that he related with great passion and clarity stood in stark contrast to the reality he lived with daily. In truth details of his dream have yet to be realized today. The dream however is alive as evidenced by the election this past year of a black man as President of the United States of America. We live in a time where hope is evidently realized. Dr. King’s hope is no longer simply words spoken, his hope has matured. The words no longer just imbued with life but alive. Hope has become reality.

President elect Obama believes in the ability of hope to transcend reality until it itself becomes more real than the womb in which it was conceived. His book the “Audacity of Hope” speaks of this phenomenon. It testifies that hope has life in it and when nurtured and cared for it matures and becomes alive. If you find yourself looking at the world around you and seeing the pessimism that is all too readily apparent, I encourage you to read this book and let his vision reawaken hope in you. Hope is audacious to those who are lost in the darkness of discouragement but to the spirit of God, hope is the means whereby His children move in time. The future is more real than the present if hope is the light at our feet.

I have been learning a lot about Faith over the last few months, about my own lack of it and my great need for it. I have been learning that God shows me He loves me in countless ways each and every second of the day. Sometimes He even shows me He loves me in ways that, to me, don’t seem very loving. I have been learning how this love creates faith in me. Recently I have begun to learn how the Faith that is born in me through Gods love introduces me to hope.

Let me relate to you a way that I have begun to look at this which has really helped me. God created us so that He would have people who were made in His likeness to share Himself with. God is love so in essence we were made to be loved. As it turns out we are fickle lovers and so we begin to look for love in all the wrong places. Namely in self love, self love is a great trap for us. In its jaws we become convinced that we have all we need within the context of our being. We can get to a place where we are so in love with ourselves that we have no need of Gods love and then the trap becomes an inescapable prison.
To set us free from this prison God sent His son Jesus. Here is a question. How can Jesus set us free from a prison of our own creation that exists largely within our own minds?
Let me take this opportunity to acknowledge that I know there are other prisons in this world. There are prisons of neglect, abuse, illness, poverty, abandonment, war and a multitude of others. I am not trivializing any of these at all. These are very real places of pain and torture. People regularly find themselves in these prisons through no choosing of their own and Jesus came to set them free from these as well. It’s a horrific hell that you find yourself in indeed when your freedom is predicated on Jesus setting another imprisoned human free from what binds them. These are the lowly of the low and the reason in which we need to embrace our freedom so readily is so we can work diligently to find these folks and aid them in whatever way we can. This is what it means to be agents of love.
However for most of us, especially we spoiled citizens of the U. S., our prisons are normally the self created self love alcatrazes of vanity. It’s our pride that ensnares us and causes us to waste our lives on vain pursuits. So to reiterate the question, how can Jesus set us free from these ethereal confines? He needs our cooperation. He could slap the shit out of us, lay down the law and set us straight for sure. He has the ability to do that. But in that He would simply be setting us free to place us in a prison of His design. He is not like that; He really wants us to be free so that we can experience the beauty of intimacy with Him. The other would be rape and He don’t play that. So then how does He break us out of our prison of delusion? He does for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. He comes and takes our way upon himself and then follows it unto death thus fulfilling our destiny. Then He secures our deliverance by our own act of faith. When we choose to believe that He has set us free we find that indeed He has. Not only that but in walking out the destiny of death in which we were imprisoned he frees us from that as well, leaving us with a destiny of life.
But now here comes the really miraculous part. God/ Jesus knows that because of the great longing we have in us we will soon be wooed away to another fatalistic marriage of delusion. We are such suckers for a tempting ballad. Maybe as a society we could keep our daughters in their prom dresses if we could keep ourselves in the wedding ring of Christ, (just a thought). Due to our tendency to promiscuous adultery Christ provides us with the ultimate marriage counselor. You may know Him as the Holy Ghost. I have come to know Him as the harbinger of hope. Without Him there is no hope that I will remain faithful, none at all. My Christ seems so dissatisfying sometimes. What with the long beard and the nasty locks. I’m just not feeling His love today. This is where the Holy Spirit steps in and says, “he’s not like that at all”. It’s my perception of Him that is jacked. He is perfect for me and the Holy Ghost is here to make sure I at least hear that message loud and clear. He brings me hope that my marriage to Christ is alive and well.
So based on this, these days I see it simply like this. In God I find love. In Christ I have faith. In the Holy Spirit comes hope. Love, Faith, Hope, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. What else do I need?