A reader wrote in with some helpful feedback recently – and it is out of that feedback that this month’s opinion column springs.
For it is true, as this correspondent stated, that some of the news we have all faced over the last few years has been extremely depressing. Whether it is the Covid pandemic, political instability in the UK and US, the war in Ukraine, the situation in Afghanistan – or church scandals, the increasing secularisation of the West, the challenges of holding Christian views in everyday jobs – there has been plenty to pull us down. The list goes on.
It is in this context that once again, despite the broken world in which we live, we want to find renewed hope in Christ. C.S. Lewis famously said: ‘Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair.’
But how do we nurture such hope? Professor Donald Denton, a US Baptist academic, helpfully summarised some years ago the Christian foundations of hope.
Firstly, he says, there is the character of God. ‘In the Old Testament,’ he writes, ‘the basis of hope is God himself – God who is utterly dependable and trustworthy. The New Testament repeats this truth.’
Secondly, Professor Denton reminds us – and of course closely related to the first source – we look to the promises of God, which are unshakeably true.
Thirdly, he states: ‘Hope is grounded in God’s saving work in Christ, in the atoning death and resurrection of him who took human form.’
And it is in Jesus that all our hope comes together. Denton concludes: ‘While hope is eager anticipation, it is therefore securely anchored and firmly grounded in the saving deeds of the Son of God. This is the foundation of the hope to which the believer has been called.’
Thus, he concludes, we will surely be in a position to fulfil Peter’s admonition, ‘Be always ready with your defence whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you,’ (1 Peter 3:15) – whatever is happening in the world around us.
