Hope Found

I remember losing my father. I was 28 and still single.  I came home at 26 after college, after starting my career path, and after adventuring abroad for a season.  I came home and had two healing years as an adult mending my relationship with my parents – especially my dad.  Then, one day, he suddenly died.  The days and weeks that followed were dark.  You went to sleep in a nightmare and woke up to the same nightmare.  It was your companion whether you were awake or asleep.

In some ways I feel that same nightmare during this pandemic lock-down.  You go to sleep in a nightmare and wake up to the nightmare.  Will we be safe?  When will the virus enter our door?  When will this end? When will we see our friends and family again?  Who am I without all my distractions and busyness?  The questions never end.  

The media keeps updating the stats: how many have tested positive in my area, how many have died…social media is just as bad…especially when friends of friends are affected for the worst.  

The suicides.  Friends and family suffering from depression.  Friends mourning deep losses.  Friends losing jobs.  Is this for real?

For the first time in my lifetime, we are a people at the end of ourselves.  We are faced fully with our mortality and end of our resourcefulness.  And this comes at a most poignant season….lent and holy week.  

Imagine the nightmare the disciples lived through….

Called by Christ to be fishers of men.  Handpicked. Loved by Christ into his inner circle.  Answering His question, “Who do you believe that I am?”  “You are the Christ.  Son of the living the God.”  The Messiah.  The rescuer of Israel, come to set His people free.  He worked miracles, he threw the entrepreneurs out of the temple, he broke Sabbath law, he cursed trees, he hugged lepers, he talked to women.  He resurrected people from the dead. He would most definitely take the oppressors by storm and tear down governments, evil strongholds and Gentiles.

Imagine the darkness when Jesus is crucified by the Roman Gentiles, dead, and buried.  

Imagine the nightmare knowing, that as a disciple of Jesus, each would surely die a brutal death too.

Imagine the horror that this was all a farce.  Jesus was a liar, he was no king.  He died.  He died on a CROSS.  He was stripped, whipped, sexually abused, tortured. And he died.  Alone.  

The darkness, the questions, the fear, the shattering of beliefs and faith….death, pain, brutality…all these the disciples experienced.  They hid for 50 days even after they saw Jesus resurrected! 

Then there is Jesus.  He alone knows a darkness we could never know – separation from His Father.  The sins of the whole world were laid on him, like a writhing blanket of hate and evil and darkness.  God rejected him.  God’s wrath sent him to hell.  If there is anyone who understands deep despair and hell itself, it is Jesus.  Jesus knows our darkness, our depression, our confusion, the collapse of our faith, our abuse, and death. And He is with us. 

Though you are sheltering alone, though people we know are dying alone, Jesus has descended to these same depths.  He is the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and He is intimately acquainted with our personal sin – he took it in his body, as if he committed it.  No one understands what you are feeling better than Jesus.  

However, the darkness is not the end….Easter is here.  At the end of Lent and Holy Week and Good Friday is....EASTER!  Easter is why our faith remains.  He IS risen!  Through the resurrection we have LIFE, we have HOPE, we ARE risen indeed!  There WILL be an end to our suffering.

Hope lost becomes hope found through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen. Oh that today you would hear his voice.  That you would feel his comfort.  That you would know his very presence.  May hope beyond understanding be your companion.