Hope

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Cor 13:13)


Paul penned these words around two thousand years ago and despite all of our technological, sociological and cultural advances they are still really the only things that remain important. Skeptics, particularly of the atheistic bent would scoff at this suggestion but I invite you to live without them. Most of us that have lived beyond our late thirties or early forties have probably tried and have found it difficult if not outright impossible to do so. 


Faith is a perfect example. Some will claim that there is no God; that everything around us is the product of pure chance and that indeed something came from nothing. The very fact that this belief is, in of itself, a statement of faith (there is no way to prove this scientifically or otherwise) seems to be somehow missed by those who hold to the idea. Everyone has a faith system for if one does not then there is no reason to continue and tragically there are some who come to this conclusion and end their existence. But it is not the loss of faith that causes this, it is the loss of that which is borne from faith and love; hope. 


Hope is the never discussed and much looked over attribute that is missing too much from the Christian's vocabulary and is desperately needed in our societies present economic and spiritual crisis. If Faith and Love were dating Hope is the unwanted third wheel in the church much like the Holy Spirit of the Trinity; seldom discussed, misunderstood, and underutilized. Which is a shame because it is rather quite powerful. 


A little over a year ago one of my business partners asked me to pray for the wife of a good friend who was stricken with a very aggressive form of cancer and he supplied me with a login to her Care Blog which she updates frequently for her friends and family. 


To say that Maria Elena Milam has been to hell and back is an understatement. She had her kidney and lymph nodes removed to find out that the cancer had spread to her spine and left lung. She went through exotic and painful radiation and chemotherapy treatments; some which she had to discontinue as the treatments turned out to be more dangerous than the cancer. She has been bounced around clinics, doctors, treatment centers, drugged, went through extremely dangerous back surgery (left a 12 inch scar), been down, back up and then down and then back up again, dealt with endless rounds of chemotherapy to joyfully discover it working on her cancer and then watch a good friend of hers die of the disease. 


How does one deal with life when it has become a personal living hell? This is what Maria has to say:

Hope really IS everything. With hope you can pick up the pieces and deal with whatever you are being dealt. There are times on this journey when I have lost it and when I found it again it was even more precious than before. This cancer journey has no rhyme or reason to it that is discernable to the human mind. But if you think about it, from strictly a human perspective there are many crazy things in life besides cancer that don't seem to make sense. I have been struggling with why some people live and some people die. The face of death is personal to me now as I have befriended people on this cancer path and those friends and aquaintences have died. There is Nancy from the center and June, Ron, and John from support groups. There is little Meena whose mother carries on with an unfathomable strength every single day. There is Laura from Inheritance of Hope. These are all people I met, got to know, and prayed for. They have moved on to the next life and they don't suffer here anymore but their families miss them terribly. And there are people that live like Billy from Virginia, Louie from New York, John from Gainesville, my wonderful friend and cancer mentor Kim, many, many people that now work at CTCA and Duke, and many people whose names I don't remember that were glowing from good news like the news that I got yesterday. There are people that I have lost track of so I don't know where they are in their fight and people fighting hard like Kristen and JayZ and Kelley. Where is the ryhme and the reason? I have come to peace with it by reminding myself every day that this is God's world and the only way to find peace with it is to find your way to God. I hope and pray that each of you can do that in your own way because it truly is the path to peace in this seemingly crazy world.

Hope is misunderstood as it has lost its spiritual connotation and context; we presently relate Hope with 'wishes', i.e. 'I hope I win the lottery', 'I hope I make a million bucks'. We associate Hope with things that we really never believe we will acquire or attain. Yet the hope of the Bible is a million miles from that definition. We cannot even have Faith without hope:

 'Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.' (Heb 11:1) 

Hope is not 'wishes and butterfly kisses', it is the real desire see the Kingdom of God established on Earth as it is in Heaven. It is born out of the Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; that even when we don't see it that in him all the promises of God are 'Yes' and 'Amen'. We Hope for substantial things and by our Faith we see them implemented in this dead dying world.


Jesus is our ultimate Hope. We know that one day we shall leave this body and someday we will see him yet again. But this is not wishful thinking, Jesus told us this would happen and we can believe him. Dead men tell no lies and neither does the one who came back from the dead. His resurrection is our Hope. Until that day Hope gives our Faith arms and legs and even sometimes wings. 


Until I started reading Maria's blog hope has not been one of my strong suits. So let's give it a shot shall we?


I hope Maria one day is completely cancer free. 
I hope that my marriage will continue to get stronger and stronger. 
I hope my children will come to know the Love of Jesus.
I hope my friend will find a job. 
I hope that Jesus will come soon. 
I hope that one moment of one second in heaven will wipe away all the suffering, pain and tears that every person has every experienced. 


I hope. 

9/11 -- Did We Learn Anything?

On September 11, 2001 Islamic, al-Qaeda terrorists turned four commercial airline jets into fuel laden flying bombs and destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, a large section of the Pentagon and if not for the heroes on Flight 93 who willingly sacrificed their lives; the White House. 2982 people tragically lost their lives that day; more than the day of infamy at Pearl Harbor. Nine years and two wars later the effects are still being felt world wide.

Did we, and when I say 'we' I mean all of us, collectively, as the most advanced and wealthiest civilization ever to exist in the history of the world; did we learn any lessons from that day?

I think we did, but I think we are hell bent on forgetting them. I think we want to bury that day away and to leave it in the ash heap of history to continue forward like the good old days when death did not rain down from the sky and steal away fathers, husbands, wives, mothers and children without any warning. We want our security back. We want our illusions.

Oh and how wonderful those illusions were. We lived in the most prosperous society in the history of mankind and the most peaceful. The world's super powers had not been at war for over fifty years, for the first time in human history. Science had promised nearly everyone a full, long life with people living regularly past eighty with an active, viable lifestyles. Doctor's long promised cure for diseases was starting to come true; it didn't matter if you had taken the highway to hell just take a pill and everything would be cured. Technology was producing an economy that was going to make everyone wealthy and that which couldn't be bought would be available for free. Man's long sought nirvana was well on its way.

My how things have changed.

Iran is acquiring a nuclear weapon and being sponsored by China and Russia who perform joint military actions together while Islamic fascists threaten to embroil the nations into another world war. Science is discovering that diseases can be more difficult to cure than we thought and the swine flue gave us an ugly reminder that new nightmares are just a mutation away. We are finding out that medicating medical problems for long periods of time causes their own side effects which can kill you just as quickly as the original problem and that the mass produced foods that we are consuming may be causing health problems like obesity and hormonal imbalances. Did I mention that we are finding out that stress will kill you quicker than anything else and how can you not be stressed these days?

That wonderful technology bubble burst and hard. The economic growth that would never end and would eventually make everyone rich cannot even produce jobs in the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Wealth at a never before seen magnitude was lost in record time. Our Government has proven itself incapable of even fulfilling an election promise of simply providing much needed hope.

There is a tendency in a wealthy society for people to think that everything is going to turn out well for them. Society has always had an attitude that their way of life will always be around and that it can always conquer the challenges it faces and find solutions to problems that threaten its existence. 'We will always overcome'. The problem is six thousand years of known human history au contraire.

On that tragic day terrorists didn't just destroy buildings and lives they destroyed our illusions of safety. We always believe that if we just do the right things; eat the right foods, exercise, drive cautiously, be green, recycle, reduce global warming, save the whales, save the dolphins, reduce our carbon footprint, use alternate fuels, be racially sensitive, divorce our old wives and marry that young thing, find the perfect spouse, get cosmetic surgery, if we are just good enough then we will avoid that thing called death.

When those twin towers of our economic might and power fell we could no longer deny that someday death too would come knocking at our door, and probably not when we are ready. Our reaction to 2900 plus deaths was disproportionate to say the 40.000 plus who die annually in automobile accidents. Our hidden horror was these people were doing nothing more dangerous than showing up for work and within hours some were jumping forty stories to their death to avoid being burned alive.

This is the lesson of 9/11 that our society refuses to learn or acknowledge; there is no hope of avoiding death. It is coming and when you least expect it.

And yet, I have good news. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16). Maybe that verse doesn't seem so contrite now.

September 12 is my birthday. Every year now I am reminded that in one horrific day three thousand people perished and every year I am getting closer to taking that trip. My birthday wish is that you will learn the secret that I have learned; God loves you, God has forgiven you, and God has life for you. That you will accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and so when death comes knocking on your door you will have the will, authority, audacity and hope to tell it to go to hell. Because you won't be there thank you very much.