Broken Signposts.
Photo by Blake Stanley at Bible Memory Project
This article was first published by Bible Memory Project — a website designed to help you memorize and meditate on the Bible.
Here’s a question for you. Are there things you hope for? In some ways, it’s a silly question. Of course there are! All of us have longings. All of us have things we hope for. We all have desires in our hearts that we hope someday will become reality. Your desires may be marked by joy and expectation.
“I hope we have fun on our family vacation next year.”
“I hope we can have our neighbors over again. They are great.”
“I hope my spouse has a great day.”
It’s also possible that your desires are marked not by joy but by brokenness, grief, or pain.
“I hope my child or grandchild will come back to Jesus.”
“I hope, this month, we can have a child.”
“I hope that someday my anxiety or depression will go away.”
“I hope we can make ends meet this month.”
“I hope the doctors can figure out why I feel so bad.”
It can be easy to read past statements like that quickly and think, “Yeah, yeah, the world is a pretty broken place.”
Until it’s your thing.
No one skims past anxiety when you’re the one who feels anxious. No one brushes past a wayward child when you are the parent praying daily for them to come home. And when you’ve been to three doctors and received no answer, those words are far from trite.
In today’s verse, the Apostle Paul says that there is something all Christians hope for. Not only that, he tells us to hope for it with patience (v. 25). At first glance, Paul’s encouragement may seem disconnected from reality, but that’s why it’s important to understand that the context of v. 25 is suffering. Brokenness. Pain. Grief.
Paul isn’t an idealist or a blind optimist. He understands the pain people experience in life — he even experienced some challenges himself. He writes, in v. 18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” He goes on to explain that creation — the very cosmos itself — is groaning, waiting (hoping and longing) for the day when things will be made right. So understand that when Paul says, “We wait for it with patience,” he is not telling us to ignore reality.
Instead, he is trying to help us see reality more clearly.
Signposts on the Journey.
Just one verse earlier (v. 24), Paul writes, “Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees?” In other words, we don’t hope for things we have. We hope for things we don’t have. And the thing Christians hope for more than anything else is the day when Jesus returns and makes all things right. We long for the day when everything sad becomes untrue.
Here’s what that means on a practical level. The longings of your heart, the desires you have that never seem to be met by earthly experiences, should not be the cause to give up hope. Instead, they should push you toward hope in a greater reality.
My wife is from Texas, which means that we often drive back to Texas for Christmas and Thanksgiving. It’s about a 12-hour drive, and as we get closer to our destination, we begin to see signs that tell us we are on the right track: “200 miles to Dallas.” “48 miles to Abilene.” The signs let us know that we are heading in the right direction. They keep us moving forward with clarity.
Here’s the point. What if your hopes and desires (even those marked by pain) are intended to be signposts? What if the reasons your experiences don’t satisfy you and even the happiest moments are marked by subtle sadness is because you were created for eternity? What if the unspoken longing of your heart is a longing for home — for something that no earthly experience could ever satisfy? What if there is an unseen reality beyond what we can see?
Well then, the only appropriate response is to hope for it — to wait for it — with patience.
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