Hope When You're Hopeless

“For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!”
– 2 Corinthians 4:17

Saturday must’ve felt pretty hopeless for Jesus’ disciples. There they are – a group of men sitting in a small room, huddled together behind a locked door unsure of what the future holds. They are devastated because their leader is gone. They are scared because of fear that leaders will come after them because of their association with him. They are unsure of what will happen next. They are confused because they don’t understand how all of his teachings and miracles and interactions with others have led to what they see as the end. Yeah, he had talked about what would happen, but as Luke tells us, the disciples “didn’t understand” and “failed to grasp what he was talking about” (Luke 18:34). What hopelessness must’ve filled that room on that day so long ago.

Have you ever felt hopeless like that before – unsure of what happens next, of where to go from here, or of how you carry on? I think we all have at some point and time in our lives. Life is full of times where we didn’t see things coming or we are filled with some of the same emotions that Jesus’ disciples had in that locked room. But life – especially the Christian life – is about rising above those feelings of hopelessness and putting our hope in Christ and the fact that He is in control and His ways are higher than ours. He’s not going to leave us hopeless and helpless – His Word is filled with instances of providing us with hope – Deuteronomy 31:6, Psalm 62, Psalm 91, Philippians 4:6-7, Isaiah 41:10, Isaiah 43:2, Jeremiah 29:11, Matthew 6:25-34, John 10:27-29, Romans 8:31, and the list could and does go on and on and on.

As Christians, it’s because of Jesus’ resurrection that His hope is ours for the taking (when we ask Him). The disciples didn’t have that understanding, but WE DO! We don’t have to stay behind a locked door in despair or fear or confusion or hopelessness because we don’t know what will happen next – we can know and depend on the fact that our HOPE is built on nothing less than Christ and His righteousness! Yes, we mess up and we fail Him and yes, there will still be days where we will still feel hopeless, but we can know and trust and believe that our Savior is a gentle and compassionate friend who is there to take our troubles and fill us with His incredible, merciful, and undeserving love and hope.

If I could go back in time to that locked room where the disciples were all huddled together, I’d share with them 2 Corinthians 4, ending with the beautiful picture of hope that is promised in verses 17 & 18 – “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.” What HOPE!