by A. W. Tozer
In a previous piece I said that hope is unique in being at once the most precious and the most treacherous of all our treasures. I have shown that, as Goldsmith says,
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light,
Adorns and cheers our way.But we do not listen long to the voice of the keen and experienced teachers of the race until we detect a note of bitterness when they speak of hope. Dryden says bluntly,
When I consider life, 'tis all a cheat.
Yet fooled with hope, men favour the deceit.And the cynical La Rochefoucauld writes: "Hope, deceitful as it is, serves at least to lead us to the end of life along an agreeable road."
Why this contradiction? Why is hope thought to be both good and bad, both cheerful and deceitful? A little observation will show us why.
Hope has sustained the spirit of many a shipwrecked sailor by painting for him a tender picture of rescue and reunion with loved ones, only to leave him at last to die of thirst and exposure on the vast bosom of the sea. Hope has kept many a prisoner believing he could not hang, that a pardon would surely come, and then stood calmly by and watched him die at the end of a rope. Hope has cheered a thousand victims of cancer and tuberculosis with whispered promises of returning health who were never again to know one single day of health till they died. Hope has told the mother that her son missing in action was surely alive, and kept her watching till the end of her days for the letter that never came and that never could come because the boy that might have written it had long been sleeping in an unmarked grave on a foreign shore.
Surely for the fallen sons of men, the Hindu proverb is true: "There is no disease like hope." Hope that has no guarantee of fulfillment is a false friend that comforts us a while with flattery and leaves us to our enemies. Expectation of a bright tomorrow when no such tomorrow can be ours will be bitterness compounded by despair in the day of the great reckoning.
Only a Christian has a right to hope, for only he has the power of God to give substance to his hope. The man who hopes in Christ is as safe as the rainbow-circled throne where sits the God who cannot lie. Such a man has a moral right to look upward and quietly wait for the fulfillment of every promise. Let him but see to it that his anticipations conform to the revealed Word of God and he has nothing to doubt or fear in life or in death. His loftiest flights of fancy cannot outsoar the promises of God to those that love Him and that hope in His mercy.
Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek. (Hebrews 6:17-20)
Hope without the great High Priest is a false hope. How dare they look forward with cheerful expectation of blessedness to come who are not protected by the oath nor held steadfast by the anchor? What is certain about human hopes? Yet millions go on assuming that all is well with their souls when they have never known the forgiving love of God nor felt the kiss of His approval. They nourish the flimsy hope that they are not so bad after all and that "God's a good fellow and 'twill all be well." The worldly minded hope that they are children of God. The impenitent and unrenewed dream of the reward of the righteous and those whose nature fits them for hell pensively hope that they will enter heaven at last.
Earth is bearable because there is hope. Hell is unendurable because all hope has fled. Heaven is eternal beatitude because hope is there in radiant fulfillment.
"For you have been my hope, O Sovereign LORD, I will always have hope; I will praise you more and more" (Psalm 71:5, 14).
( The Size of the Soul, Chapter 21 )
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