Collect for Trinity 7
Graft in our hearts the love of your name, increase in us true religion,
nourish us with all goodness, and of your great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Romans 8: 18-25
18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
Reflection
I wonder what it is about certain cliches that makes them sound like pearls of philosophical wisdom and become figures of speech, quoted by media reports and then copied in discussions about a team’s performance (or lack of it) in sporting competitions. Example: ‘It’s the hope that kills you’. What a load of tripe.
Even at the level of amateur pundits, that couldn’t be wider of the mark. In reality, hope is all that keeps you alive – the absence of hope means you’re already dead.
That doesn’t mean that it‘s possible to hope without evidence. We define hope as ‘to want something to happen or to be true, and have a good reason to think that it might’.
‘good reason to think that it might’. The Bulgarian writer Maria Popova put this succinctly “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.”
In other words, don’t cynically dismiss the concept of hope as being irrational, but make sure you have a good and justifiable reason to trust it. And we do. Even though, as St. Paul says, we cannot ‘see’ that reason – but in patience and faith, we believe in a Jesus in whom our hope is certain.
Someone made a list of the sufferings of this present time: a sinning, sighing, sobbing world filled with cancer, murder, violence, anger, relational ruptures, dementia, grief, physical, mental and genetic disorders. Sadly, this is the reality we live in. Without hope, we cannot survive. But in Christ alone, our Saviour, redeemer and friend, our hope is found.
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