Rebellious Hope — Broken & Hopeful
Some days you wake up and it seems the whole world is on fire. And you haven’t even turned on the news! The financial strain looks like it will push you into a place you never imagined yourself or your family. The health prognosis gives you pain on top of pain, and no good treatment or way ahead. Or the treatment is more painful than the original problem! The government turmoil speaks of continued dire predictions as well as death, destruction and evil. The family division cuts you up inside into a million little pieces that cry out for restoration.
I heard an interesting quote by a singer called Nightbirde, who passed away recently after a couple of years battling cancer. She said, “Some people will call it ‘blind denial’ but I prefer to call it rebellious hope.” Something about that phrase lights a fire in my soul. We don’t have hope because we are surrounded in it, or because we see the obvious way through the dark tunnel. Instead, it is a sort of rebellion, to stand in the face of whatever crisis or turmoil presented and see past it to hope. It isn’t a denial of the circumstances, but recognizing you have a God bigger than the circumstances.
And really, isn’t that what happened throughout the stories in the Bible? David saw the giant—but he looked past him to see how big his God was. Daniel saw the power of the king who enslaved him and vindictiveness of the people who wanted him dead—but looked past them to see his God shut the mouths of the lions and empower him to live as a lover of God in the middle of idol worship and evil. Hezekiah saw the might of the army coming to destroy his people—but looked past them to lay out his troubles before God and allow Him to deal with them in a way he never expected. Jesus saw the cross before Him and the pain that He would endure in it—but looked past it to you, deciding that relationship with you was worth all of it. Paul saw the shipwrecks, the stonings, the rejections at the hands of people everywhere, the prison sentence—but looked past them to the glory of knowing Jesus and making Him known to the growing Church around the world.
This isn’t a denial of whatever circumstances you find yourself in today, but rather the acknowledgment of a rebellious hope that bucks the system and challenges the status quo. I want to be found as one who stands in the face of all that tries to hurt us, not because I am strong enough but because I draw hope from the One who empowers us to stand. We may not have a reason to hope in terms of logic or what we can plan, but we still have a reason for hope found in God as He walks us through. We aren’t limited to what is right in front of us, but can look past it to the greater, the better, the lover of our soul.
Won’t you join me today in having a rebellious hope in the One who holds us together? Let’s together look past what the day is telling us and stand in the power of God to see the hope He gives us.
And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us! Romans 5:5
