Christian Hope: A Parable
My car had broken down, and a rush of anxiety spiked in me, jolting my thoughts into a mass of swirling images. Marshaling my energy, I grabbed hold of and pushed back the images, struggling to open inside my spinning head enough space to put together a plan of action–I needed to be on time for an appointment, an appointment that promised to alter my future.
I scanned the street heavy with traffic–no taxicabs in sight. I ran up and down the street, looking for a rental car company. I found none. I stopped strangers and asked them where I could rent a car. They didn’t know. I even explained to those with sympathetic faces the urgency of my need, and then pleaded with those who said they had cars to let me pay them to drive me to my appointment. All of them either declined politely, scowled at me, or informed me that my destination was miles away from the direction they were headed.
I spotted an express bus coming toward me, and I knew that the bus would be passing by the office building where the people critical to my future were waiting to interview me. Trying to catch his attention, I waved at the bus driver as I ran to the bus stop. The bus stopped, and the doors opened. I boarded the bus, spied one empty seat, hurried to it and let my full weight sink into it.
Dabbing at the beads of sweat dotting my forehead, I took deep breaths. A din filled the bus. I breathed a long and deep breath. A woman sitting next to me said calmly, “You seem stressed out.”
I nodded my head, and forced a thin smile. “That’s putting it mildly,” I replied. “My entire future rests on whether I can make it to an appointment on time. I know this is an express bus, but the traffic is so jammed! I’m losing hope . . . doubting that I can make it on time. I offered a quick prayer . . . here . . . in silence . . . begging Jesus to help me reach my appointment on time, but all I heard was loud traffic, and all I saw was the bus slowing and taking on more passengers at every stop.”
“You called on Jesus!” exclaimed the woman, her voice the sound and feel of a friend. “You’re a Christian! So am I! My name is Florence. What’s yours?”
“Ted–that’s my name . . . nice to meet you, Florence. I apologize . . . hard to focus on you . . . distracted . . . my mind on the stop where I get off . . . my hope on whether I can get there on time.”
“Ted, you seem to believe that hope is about how you move toward a future you desire and envision, and what level of confidence you have that you’ll reach that future.”
“That’s right, Florence. Most people look at hope that way–don’t you?”
“No, Ted, I don’t . . . and call me Flo’, please. Last year, during a time of severe depression, paralyzing anxiety, painful losses, and hopelessness, I redoubled my effort to see hope the way you describe it, Ted. But I found that Jesus wasn’t real and alive in that way of thinking. The more I made every effort to push myself toward the future, the more it seemed like I was running toward the horizon–the faster I ran toward it, the more the horizon appeared to recede from me. And the weight of hopelessness grew heavier in me.”
“Yes, Flo’, I know what you mean, and I can feel your compassion–you’ve been where I am! But I feel caught: As I think about how far I still have to go to reach my destination, I feel heavier . . . it’s like hope is being squeezed out of me . . . I won’t make it on time . . . I’ll be a failure.”
“When you’re being squeezed like that, a panicky kind of desperation can dig into your heart, and you’ll clutch at what you most trust to get relief. For me it was the Bible. In the past, my studying the Word of God was the way I attempted to solve my problems. This time was no different. I examined in detail every reference in Scripture to the word hope, believing that a Bible study would remedy my condition, but that didn’t give rise to hope in me. Was I missing something that the Word was showing me? Was I refusing to see the truth of my condition and God’s way out of that condition? Was the way I was studying the Word–the same way I’d studied Scripture all of my life–hindering me from knowing what I needed to know? Did I need a new and different approach to knowing the Word? Answers to those questions eluded me for a time, and I was left feeling emptier and more hopeless.”
“I’m confused, Flo’, because right now you look like you’re light, free, and full of hope.”
“I am, Ted.”
“Flo’, how did you find hope–in the real Jesus?”
“One day, after sinking lower than ever, the Holy Spirit brought the answer–a living answer–to me, and He revealed to me a different way of both seeing and experiencing the hope present and alive in the same Scriptures I’d studied for so long but for whatever had found no hope in them.”
“What did the Spirit reveal to you?”
“Ted, He showed me that when I hope, the future comes toward me!—I don’t go toward the future!”
“Toward you!? Flo’, that sounds weird, and it doesn’t sound Scriptural.”
“It’s not weird, Ted. Let me explain. A person can frame the future and his relation to it in two ways: One, he can see himself in the present, imagine outside of himself an endpoint to be reached in the future–someone he wants to be with–and then shape his behavior so that with each step he takes he goes toward reaching that endpoint–that someone–outside of himself, until at a specific time and place in the future, he reaches that endpoint and is with that someone; so in his hoping he moves toward the future. Or two, a person can see himself in the present, imagine both the Jesus he will see in His fullness in the future and the Jesus who now lives in this person as a first-fruit of this person’s hope. The more he inwardly fastens his hope on the fullness of Jesus in the future, the more he inwardly experiences the fullness of Jesus in the present; so in his hoping the future comes toward him. And what I’m saying is Scriptural, Ted–but much more: It’s real and alive, because Jesus is in it! The apostle John agrees with me on–”
I held up my hand, the signal for someone to stop talking. I scanned outside the bus–traffic was at a standstill! “Flo’! That panicky desperation is digging at me! Help me!”
“I will–Jesus and I will, because where two or more are gathered–”
“Yes, Flo’, I know what Jesus said in Matthew 18:20 . . . gathered together in His name, He is in our midst, but–”
“Ted, stay with me as I share how the Lord brought hope to me. Let the words of my story come to you, and let the Spirit reveal to you whatever you need from Jesus. OK?”
“OK, but can you speed up the story? It’s like we’re in a parking lot–nothing’s moving! I’m going to miss my appointment unless something happens–I mean fast!”
“I’ll lead you through the whole story–from start to finish–at the pace the Spirit sets in motion. One night I was at the bottom of despair–hopeless to the point of suicidal thoughts drifting in and out of my mind. Then I sensed words forming in me–words from 1 John 3:2-3–that if I fasten my hope on the future, on the day I will see Jesus as He is, that His purity–now–will come toward me, arise in me, and I will experience being purified even as He is pure–that my future hope will come toward me–now–and fill me–now–with the purity of Jesus!
“I called on the Holy Spirit to empower me to summon all the energy inside me and to focus it inwardly on that hope of seeing Jesus as He is, and–suddenly–I felt tight places loosening inside me, as though streams of pure water were dissolving clods of darkness clenched inside me, opening more space inside me, making real the Christ in me, the hope of glory, and making real the hope abounding in me through the power of the Holy Spirit. The wider and deeper my surrender to the Spirit, the more the hope of glory became the living hope–the future promise of hope coming toward me, filling me–more and more–with the present reality of hope, until the promise and the presence were one hope!”
Flo’s words felt like a tender and protective embrace, and I relaxed into their sustaining comfort. “Do you mean the kind of living hope Peter said that we entered into when we were born again?”
“I do, Ted. I’m speaking of the kind of hope that was joined to the mercy shown to you when Christ was raised from the dead, the mercy that caused you to be born again into His living hope in you.”
As Flo’ repeated mercy–the sound and sense of it–washed through me, soaking me in a liquid warmth, the warmth moving through me like gentle fingers caressing every cold and unyielding part of me. “Flo’, I feel good, hopeful⎯even, somehow, loved by Jesus, who keeps arising in me, filling me with hope!”
Flo’ smiled, and said, “Paul declares that you have your good hope by grace, and that the Lord will comfort and strengthen your heart for every good work and word.”
“Every good work and word!” I exclaimed. “I’d planned in detail what I was going to say at my interview, and I’d rehearsed it until I could repeat it word for word. My stop is just ahead! I don’t know how I got here . . . through the traffic jam. . . but now . . . I’ve got to get off the bus. Every word of my scripted speech has vanished from my mind! I don’t know what I’m going to say at the interview, but⎯here’s my stop! I’ve got to go! Flo’, thank you for your kind, encouraging, and hopeful words–always pointing me to the Jesus who keeps on coming and coming.”
“It was my joy to share Jesus and fellowship with you. Ted, do you have any sense of what you’re going to say at your interview?”
The bus door whooshed open, and as I began to take the first step through the opening, I saw the sun, a glowing circle of golden yellow, the golden yellow seemed to move toward me, the glowing circle alive with enkindling heat igniting in me a surging passion, and I leaped into the open air, suspended for a moment in the space between earth and sky, and I shouted gleefully, “No–but I have hope–it will come to me!”