I left my last writing to you with a bit more of a question than resolve. Okay, perhaps I leave many a writings that way, as I don’t intend to tell you how to live, but rather draw you to dive deep enough to consider your own ways.
The question was this, along with a bit of context for these musings:
We fill each other with hope, and there is indeed great power and even necessity in that word, yet we don’t help each other understand how to tend to disappointment when what we strive for plays out differently than we expected.
What then is better? To hope for less or to respond to disappointment differently?
Although after some pondering in the midst of some very real heartache, I realized that I was asking the wrong question. Or at least, I needed to better understand what I was asking to begin with. Because when it comes to hope, neither resolution seemed particularly helpful. To simply resolve to hope less, and for less, would be to live in dismal despair that the life you were given is better subject to mourning than to dancing. Diminishing hope is a defeating way to deal with disappointment, even if it turns out that disappointment is inevitable. Yes, perhaps you didn’t give yourself anything to be disappointed by, but then also your lack of hope kept you from finding anything to give yourself joy in.
Yet, let’s be honest with ourselves and our influencers. We hope a bit too much. Often filtered through words like dreams, passions, and pursuits. Instagram words stir up a vigor to
grab what is yours
realize life is short, so go for it
live expectantly
pray like it’s gonna happen
While Facebook stories are more like testimonials for aggressive pursuit. And dependent upon who you follow, we throw the name of God in there to assure ourselves and our followers that following Christ will eventually lead our dreams to come true since he made us for a purpose. How then could we fail?
We talk about our failures for the sake of seeming real, but only in contrast to where we have succeeded. A failure is much easier highlighted when accompanied by a dream fulfilled.
So I better start with myself.
I am a washed up worship leader. A singer songwriter who couldn’t make it. A photographer with few bookings. A writer with a small voice of influence. A wife who has imperiled her marriage. An isolated mother.
I used to dream, until I saw that dreams only merit expectation for that which was never promised.
Though as you can already tell, if I walk too despondently down this road, I circle back to the defeat of simply hoping less. Where we said only a moment ago is a strangling way to deal with disappointment. While I may have choked out anything to be disappointed by, I have also diminished my ability to cultivate a disposition of joy.
So before we address our response to disappointment, maybe we first need to adjust how we perceive this idea of hope.
First things first.
Hope is not a voice we should seek out on social media. By all means, follow those that have found success and encourage you to do the same, but we only hurt ourselves if we rely on their own story that the biggest risk gleans the greatest reward. Even your hard work is not entitled.
Pouring into your business does not guarantee a flourishing one, just as much as it does not guarantee a balanced home life.
Pouring into your faith does not guarantee immunity from your greatest tragedies, just as much as it does not serve as a lottery ticket.
The world we live in is overrun by our own hand, light and dark alike. Where yes, we may find intentional solutions to problems, where healing exists, where good can indeed endure. Yet where accomplishment by unjust means is equally as prominent as the just, where the proud become kings, where contempt measures successfully as control.
Hope, now given this perspective, does little than leave us bitter and confused when expectation is lost to reality. We long for a success story, might it be in business or health, only to be sitting dazed by the realities of a world that loves rather cruelly in all its attempts to love at all.
I am reminded of the film West Side Story, and what I believed to be a wonderful remaking of it this last year. When Maria, with gun held in her hand, lays bare the moment her hope collided with the world:
All of you! You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, with hate. Well now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!
Her words, though extreme in the emotion of tragedy, are what can happen to each of us when we at last choose to forfeit hope. That is, the hope that carries with it expectation for this life to procure good, even to the seemingly deserving.
Though for her to continue hoping that hate would not kill would only move her from the naivety of a child to the denial of one that has seen misery in lost expectation.
If then to hope more is to permit naivety and to hope less is to succumb to defeat, where then do we go from here?
Perhaps the answer lies not in how greatly or how little we hope, but in reconstructing our idea of hope altogether.
I will admit readily that if you don’t believe Jesus is who he says he is and in what he claims to have overcome, then I have little to offer you by way of hope. The guise of dreams might be as good as it gets, in which case simply disregard my words and glean from our current culture.
For if your soul returns to dust just as your body, then you might as well risk it all on the hope that bares such tension, and go to therapy in the meantime.
Given all my attempts towards success and finding that hope mingled with determination is not a pathway towards entitlement. Given all my expectation in prayer and realizing that my measure of faith does not sidestep the withering of the human body. Given that my stewardship does not provide riches. My wisdom does not manifest itself in leadership. My voice does not procure an audience. Only in all of this have I finally begun to understand hope.
Here it is.
Hope, specifically as a follower of Jesus, cannot be based on what we hope possible in this weary, restless, temporal existence. The promises established in faith were never intended for this lifetime. While yes, some promises were specifically declared for our mortal existence, most were proclaimed for our eternal longing.
Now hope is no longer something we have to contend with when it fails us.
Now we can respond differently when temporal hope fails because we have discovered that eternal hope remains steadfast.
Now we can talk about disappointment or failure. Illness or tragedy. Because we are no longer living in the naivety that prolonged hope will make way for assurance. By literally defeating death, Jesus gave us everything we need to not give into despondency.
Now we can cultivate true joy. That which does not hinge on life going a certain way, or at least a way that our dreams and expectations, even our prayers, have envisioned.
Now we can live without fighting life.
Now, for the first time, we can live with hope, because we have relinquished it as a dream and embraced it as a promise.
EXPOSITION: Consider our initial impressions of hope. If you weighed that perspective on a scale, where would you fall? Closer to the side of naivety because your social media accounts tell you that if you dream (or work or pray) hard enough your longings will come to fruition? Or closer to the side of defeat because you hoped for things that created a deep well of disappointment when they didn’t meet up with expectation?
RISE: Relinquish hope as a dream. If you choose Jesus, there is nothing you need that he has not already given. Only then can you make yourself ready to contend with life’s discouragements because now you understand joyful expectation.
DENOUEMENT: “I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.” – A letter from Paul to God’s people in Ephesus