Hope

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” - C.S. Lewis

As we enter the season of hope I have a story I’d like to share with you. It’s nothing big, but it is something that has always stuck with me.

I was 14 and heading back home on a plane from Texas, and I was on a real Jesus high at the time. Having just spent the summer with my grandma and cousins, attending Bible camp, my days had filled with singing and dancing on chairs, my nights with games of gestapo and hide and seek to the sound of crickets. There was a snack shack, there were cannonballs into the pool, there was laughter - and there was love. The love you can only get when you’ve had time in fellowship. On this plane ride home I found myself seated next to a man in his thirties who just so happened to be an atheist.

I don’t remember exactly how the topic of my faith came up, I imagine I had probably pulled my Bible out of my backpack and he had taken his cue from there. I do know he expressed interest in how I could possibly know that there even was a God, and I think my answer went along the lines of “Because I see God when I look at the trees” or something. But it is what followed next that stands out in my mind the most.

At some point we hit turbulence, and I mean bad turbulence. The seatbelt light came back on, and the pilot directed everyone including the attendants back to their seats. The guy next to me got really nervous. I was obviously nervous too, but this dude was getting red and sweating profusely. Then he turned to me and asked me if I was going to pray.

“I can. Do you want me to?”

“If you want, yeah.” he said with a shrug.

“You know you could pray too if you wanted to.” I said to him.

“I doubt it matters if I did.”

“It actually matters just as much to God if you did rather than if I did. I don’t think mine have more power than yours.”

He didn’t say anything to that, but he did give me a small smile.

We landed (obviously in one piece) and I never saw him again. I always wonder what direction his life took after that, and if he had ever changed his mind. The optimist in me says he did, but that brings me to the point that I am getting to.

I sat next to a man who claimed not to believe in God, but the second we hit trouble his first instinct was to see if I would pray. He wanted to know if I would pray to the God he didn’t believe in, to keep him safe. What is that about?

Could it be that we are programmed to put our hope in something greater than ourselves - whether we like it or not? I’m sure there’s someone out there reading this saying, “I don’t do that,” and maybe you don’t. But I’d be willing to bet there have been occasions where you have said, “The universe worked it out in my favor,” or, “the universe has been listening to the positive thoughts I’ve been putting out there,” and you’ve really believed it. Just how far off is the expectation that the universe will answer your thought from the notion that there is a God who will respond to your prayer? I’ll tell you what the difference is here - the universe is an impersonal concept. It’s an idea that something that is basically impartial will work to get you what you want. God, on the other hand, is very personal. He is a God who answers prayers because he is good, because he loves you, and because he desires the best for you. Which one sounds worth putting your hope in?

Christians are no different than anyone else - we’re just ordinary folk who were haunted by the dream that there was something more. The dream of a world where our children can run freely without ever being harmed, where we can reach out and touch the moon if we wish, where there are no longer tears of sadness and despair is just something of the past that we cannot even remember.

I write this during what has been the end of a particularly difficult week for me. A week where it was easier to despair than to hope, most definitely. But rather than allow myself to stay in the dark, I am reminded that the reason I feel this way is because I wasn’t made for the world that I’m in. It is as C.S. Lewis says, that if we find ourselves desires in which this world has failed to satisfy, it is likely that is because we are made for another world - for more. It is in embedded into our DNA to to wish, to dream, to work, and to hope for greater than what we are seeing here. And we are right to do so, because it is coming.

That day is coming.

“One day we will dance with no restraint, and we will love with no fear. For when the King returns, it will be as though our pain was but a dream, and our hope is the only reality we know.” -TB LaBerge