There seems to be a feeling of despair and hopelessness that is growing and growing. It isn’t limited to a certain age group, a social class, a race or even a country. Everywhere I look, so many people are feeling worse and worse.
It feels like there is nothing that one can do to make things right again. Not only is the world spinning out of control, but day-to-day living and decisions seem almost impossible to deal with.
Someone recently told me they were tired of “adulting”. As that individual was well into their thirties, it seemed a pretty strange thing to say.
That was, until I gave it more thought. What they were saying was that they wished that they still were a child and that they had a parent to deal with all of the struggles of life. A parent who would protect them and keep them safe at times when safety seems to be so far away.
For much of the human race, the prospect of living this life seems to be a arduous task. Not only that, at the end of it all, you die. That makes it tough for the non-Christians in this world to even want to try to make it through.
They may think it would be easier to just give up. That may be one of the reasons that euthanasia has been growing in popularity. That’s a fancy word for allowing people to kill themselves without trying to stop them.
Sadly, it is also something that they do to their own children. In some countries, this is legal and doesn’t take a tremendously high bar to meet in order to get it accomplished.
It must be that they are hopeless either for themselves or for their family. It’s that same sort of wrong-headed feeling that leads some parents to kill their spouses and children when they, themselves, decide to commit suicide.
It is a deep and dark cloud. I’ve experienced it myself. It can only be God who stopped me short of actually killing myself. Sometime in the future, I will talk about this period of my life in greater detail. But, for the moment, I want to say I understand.
It feels like everything will be better or there will be an end to suffering and sadness. I can only speak for myself and say, I was wrong to ever think that way. When I realized that I wasn’t going to die, I was so thankful. I was only a teenager but I knew that I wanted to live after all.
It was still several years before I became a Christian. During those years, I did all sorts of things that I regret to this day. While I wanted to live, I felt as if I should do what I wanted because there was nothing special to live for. It was a matter of doing what I thought would make me happy from moment to moment.
The problem is, nothing really made me happy beyond a fleeting feeling of satisfaction at doing my own thing and breaking rules that my mother had tried to enforce on me. I was so lonely and no one and nothing seemed to break through.
I was still feeling hopeless about the future. Every time I thought I saw a way to a better future, something would come up and smack me right back down.
For instance, because I was poor, there was only one way for me to go to college and that was through a scholarship.
I was well on my way to getting that dream accomplished when, due to where we moved, I had to change schools mid-semester in high school. Because the Los Angeles school district didn’t teach the advanced classes I was taking, they gave me drop fails. I plummeted from a straight A average to B- average in the blink of an eye.
There went my hopes for a scholarship. No one had ever bothered to talk to me about grants or student loans. I guess that B- average didn’t merit that type of discussion.
To tell the truth, looking back, I can see that this type of disappointment was minor compared to what other people struggle through. Notwithstanding that, it still gave me the same feeling that life was going to beat me down each time I started to raise up and that I would never be able to lift myself up again permanently.
It was when I was at my lowest point in life, when I knew that I was as much of a monster as any that I had had in my life, that I was ready to look for the true answer.
You see, I could not love myself but I discovered that Jesus loved me just as I was. He looked at me, all those years ago, and said you are worth love; you are worth my sacrifice. I want to spend eternity with you. I want to help you and to lift the burden from your shoulders.
I remembering crying and crying because I was loved. I knew that I didn’t deserve it but I knew that it was real. It amazed me that the same God who created the universe and was all good and all holy, could find it in his heart to care about me in all my wretchedness.
When I woke up the next morning, life had changed. At the time, it felt like the world was brighter and that the sun was shining more. I walked out into the daylight and was happy.
Today, I realize that the world didn’t change. What changed was me. I was no longer looking at the world as a dark and forbidding place that was going to drag me down. I had something to believe in. I had a future. I was never going to be alone again.
I had hope.
Ever since then, even through many trials, struggles and very sad times, I have never lost that feeling of hope.
Jesus came into a world that was hopelessly broken. Because of him, the people of the world were given hope of a new future. We know there will come a time when this world will pass away and God will create a new and pristine one. That is where those who have accepted Jesus as their savior will live with God forever and ever.
That is the promise and hope that I cling to. I know that God has me in his hands and will protect me. Someday I will die because all of us will. That is when the hope I have lived with since I was eighteen will be fulfilled.
In the meantime, God wants his believers to do the tasks he has called us to do. One of the most important of these tasks is to tell others about him and how they can have the peace of hope in their lives, too.
Jeremiah 29:11-13
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”