Can you imagine it? Can you imagine a life without hope? I don’t want to - it’s just too depressing. Recently, my wife and went to see the movie “The Fault in Our Stars.”
I thought it would be an inspiring story. It’s a story about a young girl who is battling cancer who meets a charming young man. He also battled cancer and they fall in love. This story had all the right elements to be an inspirational story, but it was missing one element - hope.
The first two-thirds of the movie were pretty good and you hoped the best for them. However, the last third of the movie was dark, gloomy and depressing. Don’t worry, if you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t ruin it by telling the end. I will say that it is a disappointing ending. I don’t say that because of a lack of reality in that I believe every story has a happy ending. I say that because this story lacked hope beyond the cancer.
The ultimate reason that you and I exist, as well as everything in the universe, is to show God’s glory. Without God’s glory, there would be nothing. Look around … everything created by God reflects his glory in some way. We see it everywhere, from the smallest form of life to the vast Milky Way. Sunsets, stars, storms and seasons all reveal God’s glory. All creation screams “Glory to God!”
The people depicted in this movie saw none of that. To miss the glory of God is to miss hope. Hope is less a feeling and more a confidence in what is. Faith in God is rooted in hope. Not a blind hope desiring something that will probably never really happen, but a hope built upon the confidence of solid faith.
Faith is described in the Bible this way: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
We have a hope established on the faith we have in God. There certainly is mystery in the midst of our hope and faith. There are things that we just don’t know. However, there is so much more that we do know that strengthens our faith and allows us to trust in the things we don’t understand because of what we do know and understand.
To have no hope is to be hopeless. To believe that this life is all there is and to miss the promise of an incredible life after this one makes this life something less than hope-filled. Life without hope is to miss the life God so desires for us.
Jesus said, “I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.”
Placing our faith in Jesus Christ gives us incredible hope - in this life and the one to come. No one should ever face the trials of this life without the hope God offers.
Learn more at www.newlifeonline.com or follow Steve Lingenfelter on Twitter, @stevOLL.
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