Hope for the hopeless

By David ReayTuesday 7 Apr 2015LifeWords DevotionalsCultureReading Time: 0 minutes

Read Job 13:15

15        Though he slay me,yet will I hope in him;
                I will surely defend my ways to his face. (NIV)

This statement by Job is one of the more radical expressions of faith and hope. We may tend to confuse faith and knowledge; confuse hope and an ability to predict the future. But faith and hope are quite different.

Faith is trusting that God knows what he is doing,not our knowing what God is doing. Hope is not the conviction that a particular thing will happen according to our fondest wishes,but rather a certainty that something makes sense whatever happens.

Job couldn’t make sense of his predicament. What he appears to be saying is that his hope in God is not based on God doing what Job expects him to do. It is based on the sheer reality of God who will do what is right.

Hope is not wish fulfilment whereby we psyche ourselves up to believe our wishes will come true. It is a confident expectation that God will work for good. Despite appearances,despite feelings,God can be trusted to be God.

Perhaps it is only those like Job who truly grasp this. At the end of their tether,devoid of inner resources,they fling themselves on the naked reality of God. In their extremity of hopelessness they thus find hope.

Blessings
David Reay