Hope

This past Sunday I heard the first sermon in Pastor Bess’s series on 1 Peter.  It covered the first two verses of chapter one, and he introduced it with the quotation of an old saying, “Where there is life, there is hope.”  That saying is credited to Cicero, the famous Roman statesman of the century just before the Christian era.  Scholars tell us that this saying has been applied to dying men and women down through the years.  I guess the idea is, “They aren’t dead yet, maybe something will change.”  It is sort of a hope against hope thing.  Brother Wayne went on to quote one of my favorite authors (and apparently one of his) Warren Wiersbe.  Dr. Wiersbe sees hope as the predominate concept of 1 Peter.  In fact, he titled his commentary on that book Be Hopeful.  Wiersbe writes, “It is not the fact of life that determines hope, but the faith of life. A Christian believer has a 'living hope' (1 Peter 1:3 NASB) because his faith and hope are in God (1 Peter 1:21). This 'living hope' is the major theme of Peter’s first letter. He is saying to all believers, 'Be hopeful!'”  The overarching idea of the Brother Wayne’s message was that Christians have hope beyond the circumstances of this life.

I have heard for years that you can tell what a preacher is going through if you listen to enough of his sermons. I readily thought about the fact that my friend Wayne had a son who died an untimely death and now has a grandson, still in high school, who is battling with cancer.  It was an uplifting message, a message that Wayne needed to preach and that I needed to hear.

The truth is that I was not very hopeful as I entered the Ashland City Free Will Baptist Church that Sunday morning.  The previous Sunday I had preached there, and before I began my sermon I shared a prayer request with the congregation.  I had applied to participate in a clinical trial of an experimental drug.  I had passed the preliminary qualification, and they were in the process of evaluating my medical records before a final decision would be made.  I wanted to participate in the clinical trial because it offered some hope.  There is something soul crushing about being told you have an incurable degenerative disease.  As you lose more and more of the normal things of life, there is a fear of what will go next.  More than once I have thought, if it would only stop here I could adjust and learn to live with my situation, then the realization hits that something else has become too hard to do.  It can make for a dark world, but when I read about this clinical trial I saw a flicker of light.  I even joked with the congregation that I was approaching this with hope and apprehension. Hope, because this medication had worked on rats, and apprehension because it would be administered at the University of Alabama Medical Center in Birmingham!  I know I just lost the sympathy of a lot of U of A fans with that line, but why couldn’t Vanderbilt have been doing this study?  In any case, the Wednesday after that prayer request I got word that I did not meet the medical criteria for participation in the study.  That flickering light of hope had been snuffed out.  One of the manifestations of Corticobasal Degeneration is Pseudobulbar Affect, or an inability to control one’s emotions.  I am not too proud to admit that after getting that news I just sat in my Study and cried.  

I was not looking forward to Sunday since I knew it would inevitably result in questions about the clinical trial.  While I had posted on Facebook the fact that I didn’t make the cut, I knew not everyone is into social media.  I worried that I would not be able to maintain my composure if asked to repeat the bad news.  Some would express sympathy, and some who were yet to hear the bad news would have to be informed.  It happened pretty much the way I anticipated, and my dear wife fielded most of the inquiries. I did get a bit tearful but thankfully by that time the service was starting, I could focus on something other than myself.

As a pastor I have often told congregations that in worship the focus should be on the Lord, that we should lay aside our problems and be guided by the Bible into a more profound understanding of God.  Now that I am just a listener, a listener who can’t escape my problems, I think I would modify my pastoral admonition.  No, I think it is better to bring our problems and preoccupations with us to church and apply the truth we encounter there to them.  Sometimes, like with me at church that day, the whole service will seem like it was tailor-made for you.  It felt like the message, the songs, the prayers, and the concern of fellow believers was just for me.  It brought light back into my darkness.  

Now, I know that my friend Wayne, and the song leader Doug, hadn’t gotten together and conferred about how they could minister to me on that Sunday.  No, the arrangement of things came from a higher source; I believe this was part of the work of the Holy Spirit.  God took all of the elements of the service and applied them to my wounded heart.  After reading that sentence you might conclude that I must have a pretty high opinion of myself to assume the God of all creation cared enough about me to go to all of this trouble, but you would be wrong.  The high opinion I hold is not of myself but of the God that loved me enough to save me and care for me as the Shepherd of my soul.  On that Sunday the good Lord fulfilled in my life one of the most precious promises of the Shepherd Psalm-- He restored my soul.  What’s more I firmly believe God does this sort of thing for His children all the time, at least He wants to.  The truth of the matter is, I strongly considered not going to church that morning.  Besides being depressed I was more tired than usual, and as Vince Lombardi once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.”  As I have already said, I was a bit fearful of my reactions to people’s questions--but just think what I would have missed had I given in to my fear.  

To conclude the service Pastor Bess had us sing This World Is Not My Home, which is hardly a typical invitation hymn.  Once we got through the first two verses, he wanted Doug to lead us in the first verse again, but Doug suggested the third verse instead.  Since it was hardly the time for a debate, the Pastor agreed that the third verse would be fine.  That third verse says,

I won’t have long to stay, My work is nearly done.

I’m happy now to say, My race is almost run.

So long my eyes have set, On heaven’s open door

And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

The first two lines of that verse pretty well summed up my situation.  I’m striving to make the final two true as well.  Wouldn’t you know it, my friend Wayne called on me to close the service with a word of prayer.  With that third verse still in mind I prayed, “Lord with all the things of this world crowding into our field of vision, help us to keep our focus on the promise beyond this life.”  God had used that day to make a change in my life.  I had come in the door feeling hopeless.  I was leaving feeling hopeful.