A high school friend posted the following quote on his Facebook page (the words come from the main character in the movie, The Green Mile): “Mostly I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand?”
These words resonate deeply with me. Life can be tragic enough on its own without the horrible, unbelievable things people do to each other. And in this age of online news and social media, we hear about these terrible acts on a regular basis. Sometimes, it’s almost enough to make me want to give up. When I think about the people who commit horrific crimes, abuse others, and just generally have no respect for life (their own or that of others), I become judgmental and feel rather hopeless.
But no one is beyond the reach of God. The fourth verse of 1 Timothy chapter 2 tells us that God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” No sin is too awful for His forgiveness. No person is too far, too dirty, or too hopeless for the Father to want them.
We should never give up and we should never live without hope. I’ve heard it said that human beings can live for forty days without food, four days without water, and four minutes without air. But we cannot live for four seconds without hope. If I had no hope, I would not almost give up, I’d already be done. Thankfully, we need not live without hope. Here are just a few reasons given by the organization World Vision for us to have hope in 2018:
- Extreme poverty is giving up ground.
- We are 99 percent of the way to eradicating polio globally.
- The end of the HIV and AIDS pandemic is in sight.
- We can solve the global water and sanitation crisis within our lifetimes.
- Many kids in Africa will soon walk minutes instead of miles for water that will no longer make them sick.
- Restored relationships are possible, even in the worst of situations.
What’s more, the hope we have in God is different than the hope this world has to offer. As we live our lives on earth, we might say, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I hope it happens.” Then, if it doesn’t happen, we may want to give up. But when we read about hope in the Bible, (for example, in 1 Peter 1:13, “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”), we’re not just being taught about wishful thinking. Christian hope is when God has promised that something will happen and we put our trust in His promise. Our hope gives us certainty that things will happen; they haven’t happened yet. Since I have this hope, the only real hope, I’m giving up on giving up.
Troy Burns