24 Words - Hope

This is the eighth of 24 blog 'thoughts' throughout June as part of a challenge to honour my sister Anna Murray who died on 20th October 2019. You can read my reflections on my sister here and watch a film I made about her here. If you want to donate to Pancreatic Cancer UK you can do so here. These posts will be short 'thoughts' rather than detailed blog posts.

Hope is in pretty short supply at the moment.  It feels like the world is on fire.  Last weekend people were tweeting things like 'London has fallen'.  Despite the attempts to minimise the violence I suspect the 27 police who were hurt didn't see the riots as a minor skirmish. Young people, immersed in social media, feel overwhelmed with the evil that seems to swirl all around us.  The slow almost casual killing of George Floyd shook the world and has sparked a long overdue debate on racism and oppression.  Injustice and oppression is all around us.  It is seen in the Christians who are being oppressed, tortured and killed all around the world and hardly anyone bats an eyelid.  It is seen in the thousands of children suffering neglect and abuse in a society that often doesn't care about who it doesn't see.  China voted at the end of May to impose a new security law in Hong Kong that would impose sweeping changes and undermine basic freedoms.  Where was the outcry?  The silence was deafening.  If oppression, human rights abuses and racism is evil then lets not pick and choose our causes.  Lets unite and call it out wherever it lurks.  

So where can we find hope at this time? In Lamentations 3 v 21 Jeremiah says; 'Yet I call this to mind and therefore I have hope.'  Jeremiah has been surveying the wreckage of Jerusalem.  The people were besieged, they suffered horribly, the walls were breached and the people were enslaved and exiled.  So what does Jeremiah do?  He looks to the Lord.  He remembers certain truths about the Lord that encourages him.  As my late father said in a sermon in 2014: 'memory, instead of being the servant of despondency now becomes the handmaid of hope.'  What truths does Jeremiah remember?  

1. A sober self assessment - Jeremiah remembers that it is because of the Lords mercies that God's people are not consumed.  Even in all the devastation he is able to acknowledge that God's people still have not got what they deserve.  God has stopped short of utter destruction.

2. The character of God - Jeremiah remembers who God is.  His mercies, his loving-kindness, his faithfulness.  God is a covenant making and covenant keeping God.  The Lord is driving idolatry out of his people so they will once again love and worship him alone.  Isn't it wonderful that God's mercies, his compassion is new every morning?  It never gets stale.  It is like the manna in the wilderness.  Fresh every day.  God doesn't promise us a reservoir he promises us new mercy each day.  That why the Psalmist tells says in Psalm 90 v 14 'Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.'

3.  The best ground of hope - Jeremiah says that the Lord is his portion v 24.  God is all we need.  As Matthew Henry said 'God is the all sufficient happiness of His people.'  I love the old Scottish metrical Psalm 73 v 25:

Whom have I in the heavens high

but thee, O Lord, alone?

And in the earth whom I desire

besides thee there is none.

4.  The right attitude to bring deliverance v 25-28.  One of the great dangers is  that we choose our own way out of difficulties.  Jeremiah says under the inspiration of God 'It is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.'  What do we do while we wait?  Seek him (v 25).

We can easily become overwhelmed as we watch the news.  It can seem that God has lost control.  Without hope we have nothing but despair.  But lets use our memories like Jeremiah.  Lets call to mind those same truths that brought him hope in a sea of desolation.  As somebody has said 'christian grief isn't about the absence of tears, but about the presence of hope.'