Hope Is Not Always Up To You

There is a kind of hope for which we cannot hope.

There is a simple kind of hope, like the hope of making coffee.

But there is also a kind of hope that is bigger than any of us, that dwarfs us, that includes us.

We need this hope. I need this hope. My church needs this hope.

We experience hope when we have a sense that we know how to do something, and we have the power to walk that journey. Or, to use the bigger words,

hope = agency thoughts + pathway thoughts

I’m writing this newsletter right now, mainly staring at the blank screen. But, I know I have something to say that will help you (agency), and I am confident in my ability to string sentences together (pathway,) so I have high hope that soon this page will be filled with something of value.

But what happens when the pathway is not ours to walk? Or the agency lies with someone else?

One of my favorite writing pieces in this world is a one-page essay from Vaclav Havel. You should know that he was a play-write and political dissident who became the first President of the Czech Republic. Yet for all he had seen, he found himself the victim of a freak accident, about to drown in sewage— literally. He had no way of escape: no agency, and no pathway. Yet, he had hope.

What gives?

Or, to bring it into Christianity, what hope do any of us have of salvation? I think of the woman at Jacob’s Well. She has low hope of drawing water from the well because she has no bucket— no pathway. Yet she ends up having a whole different kind of hope in what Jesus calls “living water.” There’s nothing we can do to drink it but accept the gift from Jesus. The agency and pathway are God’s alone.

The first kind of hope, the kind where the agency and pathway are our’s, I call “practical hope.” This is the kind of hope that suffers when churches face hard times, like decades of decline and societal change. The world changes around us, and not only do we not know what to do about it (no pathways,) we know in our hearts that there isn’t anything we can do about it (no agency.)

The good news is that there is “ultimate hope:” hope that doesn’t depend on us. Ultimate hope looks outside ourselves for agency and pathway, trusting— believing— in good even when we can’t reach it, trusting that it still is there even when we cannot see it.

Here’s the catch: while practical hope and ultimate hope are useful divisions, in the end, hope is hope. If you know in every fiber of your being that God’s got this (high ultimate hope) but don’t claim the gifts God gave you to participate (low practical hope), then even your ultimate hope is lacking. If you know you can do something (high practical hope) but believe in nothing outside yourself (low ultimate hope,) even your practical hope will eventually run out.

Hope is only hope if it is both ”ultimate” and “practical.”

So which one is stronger for you?

Like many western Christians of our era, I’ll admit my ultimate hope is a lot stronger than my practical. I trust deeply in the larger thing God is doing in the world, in the trajectory toward a good and perfect end that God has been working towards from the beginning. But all too often, I doubt my ability to enact real change. I get overwhelmed by the problems of the world that aren’t mine to deal with, and my low sense of personal agency and pathways starts to drag down my faith— my ultimate hope.

But I’ve known others who launch into projects with enthusiasm, having admirable confidence that if they work hard enough on the right ideas, they can make a difference in their community and the world. It is inspiring, and I need to learn from them! But, I suspect many of them have much lower confidence in God’s ultimate purposes. Too many think it’s all up to them— if they don’t do it, all is lost.

If you are a church leader, where does your congregation fall on this spectrum? Is their hope lopsided? What part of their hope (practical or ultimate, agency or pathway) is lacking? What might you do to strengthen it?

I hope I’ve given you a vision of hope— or, better said, a vision of complete hope. While I believe that God is actively working to restore all of our hope, this newsletter is my pathway to share what I’ve learned with those who need it. Subscribers are increasing! Would you let me know how it’s going for you? What has helped you, and with what do you struggle? And if it’s helped you at all, please share it with someone you think might benefit in their life or their leadership. This newsletter might be just the pathway someone else needs, too.

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