Posts Tagged: Hope wins

“No Hopeless People”

On May 10, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My Dear N______,

No, N______, you are most definitely not hopeless.

When I feel hopeless (as I often do), I try to remember that there is hope, and then there is the feeling of hope. They are not the same thing, as you seem to intuit, based on some things you said in your email report.

I was recently studying more deeply Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14. The people of Judah had been taken into exile by the Babylonian Empire, and they felt hopeless. They were just a bunch of very dead, dry bones that had not even had a decent burial. They were as good as dead—or as bad as dead. Even their hope was dead.

And then, God showed up and said, “Yep, you’re dead! You got that right!”

But that wasn’t the only thing that God said. God also asked a question to the prophet: “Son of man, can these bones live again?”

And the prophet threw the question back in God’s face by saying, “LORD God, you know.” Some people regard Ezekiel’s response as showing his trust in God’s power and intentions. I don’t. I think the prophet himself sounds pretty discouraged and skeptical. Maybe that is because I myself am often discouraged and skeptical.

In any case, in Ezekiel’s vision the bones came together, were covered with skin, breath entered them again, and they stood on their feet.

I frequently think that I know how Judah felt in exile. Exile comes in all shapes and sizes. Being exiled politically is a horrible thing. Being exiled from your own family is too.

But the worst form of exile, I think, is being exiled from your better self. That is exile indeed.

However, I believe (at least in my better moments) that there is a God who shows up in my/our exile and who is not simply the God of my hope, but the God of my hopelessness. I believe that God is also the one for whom there are no hopeless people or hopeless situations. I don’t always feel that it is true, but I will not allow Hope to be held captive by my feelings. In fact, Hope can’t be held captive by anything or anyone. Hope, like love, always wins in the end.

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