Hope

Hope.

It’s such a positive word.

We hope.

There is so much anticipation, opportunity and longing hidden in those four letters.

As I write today there is a lot of hope in England. This evening our football team plays in the semi-final of the World Cup against Argentina. On the TV news reporters were going around talking with fans of all ages and essentially asking them how much they were hoping England would win.

The iconic football song Three Lions, written for the 1996 Euros (the European equivalent of the World Cup) held in England, is about hope: unfulfilled hope (’30 years of hurt’) and renewed hope (‘It’s coming home, it’s coming home, it’s coming – football’s coming home’).

I hope we will win this evening, and then I hope that we will win the final. But it’s speculative ambition on my part. I can do nothing to control the outcome (sorry to break it to you but wearing lucky shirts, scarves and so on doesn’t work). This evening, like every other football fan, I will be a passenger on the 8pm express train to an uncertain destination: either New York (the final) or Miami (the third place play-off). And the ease of the journey itself is unpredictable – think about the ‘Hand of God’ and that goal in 1986; David Beckham getting sent off in 1998 and scoring the winner in 2002 – all England vs Argentina.

We hope.

And I think it’s the raised anticipation that hope gives us which means that if it is unfulfilled our emotions crash heavily, because there’s nothing underpinning it. It’s just hope.

The uncertainty of hope makes some of what the Bible says seem a bit less predictable than we might expect. There are many references to people putting their hope in God (especially in the Psalms), but if it’s like football hope then it may result in us being let down – hopes dashed. But the Bible seems to offer certainty in response to hope. For example:

“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.” (Psalm 62:5)

“put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.” (Psalm 130:7)

Hope in God is not an optimistic wish, it’s an expectation. The certainty doesn’t come from our hoping, but from God’s faithfulness. God has promised, we hope, God comes through.

You can see it poignantly laid out in Luke 24. This is the evening of Easter Sunday. Jesus has been resurrected and has appeared alive to different people. But it seemed too good to be true to Cleopas and his unnamed companion (I like to think it’s his wife, Mary) trudging despondently from Jerusalem (where there’s all sorts of confusion) to Emmaus. It’s a journey of about 7 miles.

They’re discussing what’s been going on but can’t make head nor tail of it. A stranger (we know it’s Jesus but they don’t) comes alongside them and asks them what they’re talking about.

They tell him all that’s happened, and finish with these heartbreaking words about Jesus after saying he’d been crucified: “but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.” (Luke 24:21)

There’s that word again. They had hoped. But their hopes had been dashed.

The beautiful irony is that they were telling resurrected Jesus, in whom they had correctly hoped, that their hopes were in vain when they didn’t know that their hopes were fulfilled. I love that. Soon afterwards they do recognise Jesus and realise that their hopes were fulfilled beyond their expectations. Their hope was not in a human, but in God, and God comes through.

I don’t know in whom or what you put your trust. But I only know of One in whom I can hope with certainty.

Be blessed, be a blessing