“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” [Col 1:27]

Of the facts of the prophet Habakkuk’s life we have no certain information. He probably delivered his prophecy about the 12th or 13th year of Josiah (B.C. 630 or 629), just before the invasion of Judiah by Chaldeans. It is suggested that the name came probably from a Hebrew root meaning ‘to clasp’. He was a contemporary of the prophet Jeremiah. The national catastrophe, which was imminent and which had been predicted before the prophet’s day, had now come, and Habakkuk spoke and lived to see the fulfillment of his words. Habakkuk engages in a soliloquy between himself and God. He arraigns God rather than Judah implying that He allows injustice and wickedness to go unchecked. He asks the age-old question: ‘Why are the wicked ruling classes allowed to oppresses the weak in society?’ God answers, “I will punish them by the Chaldean invasion.” Next he asks how God can allow wicked Judah to be punished by a nation which itself is more wicked than Judah. His sense of justice is violated by such a thought. God replies that this result is in accord with the divine purpose.

Habakkuk seeks further light as he acknowledges that the judgment of God against Judah is just. Then it is that God reveals that the Chaldeans in their turn shall be destroyed, and at last the people of God will possess the earth. Habakkuk writes passionately and inquiringly. Some of his phrases: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea”, “in wrath remember mercy’ stand out as precious jewels in splendid array. Habakkuk in an attitude of hopeful expectancy, waits to see the issue. The woes awaiting them are arranged remarkably. The whole concludes with the magnificent psalm in chapter 3. It is a composition unrivalled for boldness of conception, sublimity of thought and majesty of diction.

In the Book of Acts of the Apostles chapter 26, we have the celebrated passage of Paul’s address to King Agrippa before whom he was brought for judgment. Paul characterizes the occasion as ‘trial for hope in the promise made by God to our fathers, to which our twelve tribes hope to attain’. Ephesians 1:3-14 is a powerful affirmation of the origin of the church. Paul begins his first letter to Thessalonians with these powerful words: “We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers. Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father.” (1 Thess 1:2,3) They remind us of an important attitude of life – thanksgiving. Here Paul links together three of his favorite words: faith, hope, and love. The Thessalonians had demonstrated the practicality of these virtues. Their faith was not mental speculation but a prompter of good work. Their labor was energized by love. Their patient disposition grew out of the hope they had in serving God and waiting for Jesus’ return. Faith, hope, and love were not just pleasant feelings but were also motivators for Christian character and conduct. Paul’s purpose in writing included a positive affirmation of the Thessalonian Christians’ lives. Such affirmation serves as a good example for us today, for an encouraging word is needed greatly in many lives. As someone has observed, the only time some people ever hear ‘Bless you’ is when they sneeze! The passages dealing with hope are appropriate for today as we face so many uncertainties.

In a powerful passage in Hosea, we read of the promised restoration. “And there I will give her vineyards, and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.” There was no hope for faithless Israel in Canaan. Achor (trouble) in exile was the only way she could be restored to her place of favor with God. (Hosea 2:15) In all our life and work this is the final basis of our hope, that God remains God whatever happens and that He will keep His own. D. T. Niles speaking of Christian mission suggested four basic facts for our assurance.

1. The work is His. The charter of all Christian work is that God Himself is the workman. Our situation is not simply that we are working for God, but that we are working with Him in a world in which He Himself is at work. No achievement of human freedom can remain a sure possession, until it becomes part of the larger purposes of God. We serve a God with whom we can trust our mistakes.

2. Secondly we are His. Often we put so much stress on our decision for Christ that we forget the overriding importance of his decision about us. I was His before He became mine. In one of the agonizing conversations between God and Jeremiah, Jeremiah asks God, “When did you really get hold of me?” and God answers, “When you were still in your mother’s womb.” (1:5)

3. Thirdly, they are His. Philistia and Syria were the enemies of Israel, but they too were His. The Hebrews crossed the Red Sea and walked into a new land; the Egyptians lost their King and their firstborn and now faced a new day. Deliverance was deliverance for both. The truth of God in Christ is truth for all men, because it is truth about all men. This all-embracing nature of the Christian faith, however, loses its evangelistic thrust when we who know it do not live by it.

4. Fourthly, the future is His. The promise of Jesus to His church was that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

The one single most malaise of modern man is depression. There are times when life’s events strip away all hope. These moments, when there is nothing ahead and nothing behind, are the darkest and bleakest times for the soul. They are times of desperation. It was Henry David Thoreau who said that the mass of us lead lives of quiet desperation. One of the chief causes of despair is an aching loneliness – the need to reach and touch and to be reached and touched, to hold and to be held. ‘Do you know what it is like to be lonely all your life long?’, one man asked. ‘I do. Do you know what it is like to be always on the outside looking in and no matter what you do, not being able to get in? I do’. Angry resentments ferment. A prominent psychologist has suggested that a man can survive without bread and water for unusual periods of time, but if he has no hope, he will perish immediately.

The amazing story of Leo Algimas comes to mind. Among the thousands herded into concentration camps by the Nazis was Leo’s family. Like the others, they endured incredible hardships, but because they had a symbol for their hope they never slipped into the despair that engulfed so many. What was this symbol that gave them such courage? It was a tiny piece of paper torn from a box of chocolates made in Chicago. The particular candy co. prints a little American flag on the bottom of all its boxes and that was the scrap of paper that the Algimas family possessed from hand to hand in their barbed-wire enclosure. They looked at it, held it and whispered, with eyes shining, about the army of liberation that was coming. Hope seems to have little to do with proof.

Years ago an S-4 submarine was rammed by a ship off the coast of Massachusetts and sank immediately. The entire crew was trapped in a prison house of death. Every effort was made to rescue them but all failed. Near the end of the ordeal, a diver placed his helmeted ear to the side of the vessel and heard a tapping inside. He recognized it as Morse code. It was a question, forming slowly, ’Is…there…any…hope?’

Hope can mend your broken heart – if you give God all the pieces. Despair is broken hearts, broken dreams, broken promises, and many broken lives, but…God uses broken things…broken, but not severed, fallen but still functional. It is only in the darkness that we can see the stars. In the darkness of our despair the promises of God become our stars of hope. Trust is the bulwark of our hope. We can face whatever comes once we have relinquished our lives and the lives of our loved ones to Him. He is the God we can trust for strength each day. He is the one with all the love and understanding, who has a clear and eternal purpose for us. We can trust God with all our problems, all our heart aches , and especially with all our long-term anxieties.

Philosopher Gabriel Marcel’s theme was ‘Hope is a memory of the future’. Remember always Paul’s celebrated phrase in Colossians, ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’. Christ is the hope for a changing world. When we say that we have to get the dimensions of the world right for the world God so loved. We have to open ourselves to the people who live in that world. Ceaselessly, God is calling us to move out of our private, individual worlds in order to join God in God’s world, there to minister alongside Christ.

Have you ever considered the significant difference between hoping for a baby and expecting one? For the gospel, hope is not wishing something could happen. Hope is knowing that it will happen. Christian hope is expectation expressed in patient, enduring confidence. This is hope within which we may dwell, because the hope is grounded in God, what the God of grace has done, is doing, and will do for the world God loves.

This brings us to the context of the key verses in Mark 5. The familiar story of Jairus falling at Jesus’ feet and beseeching him to save his daughter who lie at the point of death. Three simple but telling features meet us in the account of his coming to Jesus. First, the reason for his coming; second the response to his coming and thirdly, the result of his coming.

First, the reason for his coming. Because he was in trouble. How often it takes trouble to bring people to Jesus! It is grim and desolate to face serious trouble without Him. While circumstances remain prosperous, many people forget Him and live without Him. Again, Jairus came to Jesus because no other could help. Jesus was the one hope; and to Jesus he came, with urgent entreaty. Once more, Jairus came to Jesus because he believed in the power and willingness of Jesus. Presumably, Jairus had seen Jesus before this, and had heard His teachings and had witnessed some of the ‘mighty works’.

Secondly, see now the response to his coming. At once Jesus went with him. There was immediate readiness to meet the deep need and to honor sincere faith. Besides readiness, however, there was discerning wisdom. Our Lord allowed Jairus’s faith to undergo a test. He was delayed by the sick woman who came behind and touched the hem of His garment; and while He lingered with her, word came to poor Jairus, ’Thy daughter is dead. Why troublest thou the Master any further?’ It must have seemed to Jairus that the response of Jesus was too slow; but now there came a lovely word of reassurance: ‘Be not afraid; only believe’ As it was then, so is it now. Jesus is always immediately ready to save, to heal, to answer; but sometimes He allows faith to be tested with a view to an even bigger answer than we have dared to ask; and whenever He allows faith to be tested, we always have His word of reassurance: ‘Be not afraid; only believe’.

As for Jairus, see now the result of His coming. First, Jesus entered his home. Second, Jesus expelled all unreality – the groaning and wailings of the professional mourners. Third, Jesus proved Himself the prayer-answering wonder-worker. Jesus takes the little one’s hand, bends over her, and says, ‘Talithacumi’ (Little girl, get up) The eyes open. The lips part in a lovely smile. She takes a deep breath, sits up, gets out of bed and hurries into the fond embrace of her overwhelmed parents.

There is a colloquial expression about ‘coming to the end of your tether’. The exigencies of modern life tend to engender this ‘end-of-your-tether’ extremity. The pressures of present day wear thousands of people down both nervously and spiritually. Worry, over work, strain, ill-health, frustration; some dragging defeat by an evil habit; being misunderstood or shunned. These are some of the things which bring people to tether’s end. It is really a coming to the end of one’s resources with a sense of sickening helplessness and heart-breaking destitution. Sometime ago I read a couple of lines which have lingered in my mind ever since.

“When you feel at the end of your tether,
Remember that Christ is at the other end.”

Sometimes this ‘tether’s end’ or ‘wit’s end’ extremity is brought on by circumstances over which we have no control. Sometimes we bring it on through our own willfulness, injudiciousness, foolish risks, mishandling or misunderstanding. But whichever way it comes, it sweeps the heart with a feeling of being helplessly, hopelessly stranded. What we each need to learn, if we are sincere lovers of our Lord Jesus, is that especially at such times we are dealing with not only a sympathetic but empathic Christ. Let us remember 1 Peter 5:7 “Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you.”

A woman who had to work long hours to support herself and her children earned barely enough to pay the bills. Frequently, however, she brought a ticket in the state lottery. After watching this woman spend another dollar to gamble in this way, a friend asked, ‘Why do you waste your money on a lottery ticket when you can hardly make the ends meet?’ ‘Yeh, I buy a ticket every day’, the woman acknowledged. ‘But a dollar is not too much to pay for twenty-four hours of hope’.

Hope is the sense of possibility. In genuine hoping, that for which we hope has some reality now, even though the suffering person may overlook it. To be sure, hoping includes imaging a future in which the possibilities of a concrete life might come to fruition. A beginning is experienced now, Genuine hoping does build on the past. It remembers the fulfillments already experienced. Genuine hope enlarges the significance of the present, a present alive with possibilities to which the despairing person is usually blind. Hope is not merely a longing for what we are presently missing, but rather a desire to experience more fully what we have already received. In contrast to desire or wish, hope is not impatient. Hope is able to wait for God’s time which essentially is patience. Hope not only imagines, it imagines with… Speaking in the medical context, two imaginations, that of the patient and that of the doctor, work together to discover and enlarge the possibilities of the situation. Hope cannot be achieved alone. It must in some way or other be an act of a community.

Binding together faith and love is hope. The heart of Paul’s hope can be put in three words: ‘being with Christ’ (Rom 6:8; 1 Thess 4:17; Phil 1:P13) Being with Christ means being ‘in Christ’ which includes being like him, ‘conformed to the image of his Son’ (Rom 8:29).

May the Holy Spirit give us more faith and love and together bring us the hope eternal to trust Him and Him alone. Amen.