Hope, always Hope!

Someone said, “history repeats itself”. How true that is depends on the life one chooses to live. If one accepts to be confined in a rat race cage forever, then surely history repeats itself, where they start is where they end. But if someone chooses to get out, and try something new, this statement is put to shame. Else, will we have another Jesus to die for the sin of the world?

Take a look at this short true narrative. 

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 A farmer’s son had never ventured farming. With the hope of finding a good job getting less and less, he decided to pour out his savings into farming, hoping it’d bring some increase. Understanding that he knows very less about farming, he decided to ask for assistance from his parents, who had a huge experience with farming, but he had what he wanted to plant in his mind.

From a distance, he kept sending money to his parents to pay the laborers. He kept curious about his investment, nervous, and happy at the same time. He could see his savings reducing more and more, but realizing he could not be sure of the farming since he had never done it before. 

One day he asked his sister about the condition. The sister told him something he never expected. “Sorry brother”, she said, “I’m afraid you might have to look into next seasons, this will not yield to anything.” The poor boy had to remain silent on the other side of the phone with nothing to say. In his mind, he thought the parents had deceived him all along, on the other hand, he didn’t want to lose hope yet. “Let God do what pleases Him”, he then replied to the sister.

A few months passed, and his father called him, telling him to prepare for at least two more weeding before the harvest. “Do you really think this will give a good return, Dad?”, asked the lad. “Son, we always hope for the best, but only God knows what tomorrow brings. For now, let’s just keep trusting God.”, the dad said. This was a very confusing statement to the lad. Reluctantly, he made a transfer to the Dad’s account.  He said to himself, “God, you know all things, you know all my efforts and hopes”.

Before the second weeding, the mother called him, “I’m told the harvest is ready, I’m hoping to present the first fruits to the Lord, and you can think of what to do with the rest.”, she said. Boom! That was huge. “It’s okay Mom, to the Lord it was, and now is. Do it as it seems right”, the lad replied with great joy in his heart.

After the first fruit offertory was made, the mother called him again, “Son, I had fear that there’d be nothing good. The plantations were hit by hailstorm just a few months after they sprouted. In my experience, they always don’t do good in such circumstances. I’m surprised it’s not that bad…”, she told him. “Let the hailstorm plant for itself, this was for me”, the youngster replied. 

Well, experience is good, but hope is great. If the experience that we have can not build our hope for the unseen, it is not a good experience. If it ensnares our hope for the future, it’s not worth having. 

From the statement of the mom to the boy, “I had fear that there’d be nothing good…”, it’s clear that if for experience alone, the plantations were supposed to be destroyed, to wait for the next seasons. It’d do better if they were cut down and allowed to rot in that field, it’d make the field more fertile. But to deny self experience, to believe that a change is possible in spite of the experiences in the past, is nobler. 

I used to wonder why literature review was almost part of most proposals. But now I wonder less. I realised that people give a lot of attention to the past, than to the unseen future. This perhaps explains why most great discoveries seem accidental. Accidents need no experience, they just come anyways. They need no expertise. They need neither doubt, nor hope.

The writer of old said:

 “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not in your understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path“.

The understanding of a man is greatly built by his experience, but what room does it give for hope? What room does it give for new things? What room does it give for seeming impossibility to take place? 

Recently, a friend asked me if it’s necessary to hope for what one already knows. I asked him, “… Do you hope you are Daniel?” He told me he doesn’t, that he already knows he is Daniel. In the same way, if we keep looking for what we already have, we might spend our entire life searching for it, but it’s there anyways. 

We have been taught of rivers in the desert, and a roadway in the wilderness, but our inclination to our understanding and experiences have blinded us from seeing this reality. In many situations that we face, we look for something in the past to compare, and in most cases, there’s not a happy ending to the stories. We realize that the future keeps surprising us if we keep relying on the past. Infact, the present will be full of accidents, and less of incidents.

If the future is more important than the past as it has been said, why don’t we often rush to surrender our future to He who has lived in the future, who knows all things before they happen, who understands all our surprises? Why do we rather look in the past to find a situation we can use to compare? Is it not said, “there’s no other way to be happy, than to trust and obey”?

Now, the biggest question should be, “how can I be be more intentional about the future?”

Let’s get one thing clear, it’s not bad to visit the history sometimes. It’s very bad to visit it if it replaces the hope for the future.

Now, to answer that, it’s time to make “flint knives”. It is time to “circumcise” again. When God delivered us from the bondage, we were circumcised of flesh, but now it’s time for a new man to undergo a new circumcision, to have union with the Lord. It’s time to circumcise the heart. To circumcise the mind.

The writer of Hebrews urges us to fix our eyes to Jesus, the author, and finisher of our faith. Not any longer to keep gazing at the cloud of witnesses, nor to keep haunted by the past. Just to FIX our eyes on Jesus. 

According to Strongs, to fix eyes is rendered to consider attentively. How can consideration be made attentively if there are so many disruptions? If the direction keeps changing? Yes, we know we want to move forward, but how can that be done if we are so concerned with our past?

Jesus says “follow me”. That’s it. 

If we want a true freedom, then that’s it. To leave one act that used to put us down, is not sufficient to give us the freedom that we need. To leave, and start walking on the right path is the most relieving thing. That right path is Jesus. He is the hope that we need, the redemption that we need, and the seal that we need.

To sum it up, as the writer of 2 Corinthians says, we walk by faith, not sight. Stop being destructed by what you see around, and fix your eyes on Christ who will help you perfect your faith, that you might find a substance to hope for, and have evidence of the things that none has seen yet.