Our Hope is in the Lord

Where does hope come from? Admittedly the word doesn’t appear in Psalm 14. Perhaps we should have said titled this week’s resources “Our refuge is in the Lord.” That at least would echo the text a little more closely. But no, we stayed with hope. As if such a thing was possible. As if there could be, might be, should be a source of hope, no matter what might be going on around us.

If you are struggling with all that is going on around you these days, then you have a soul friend in the writer of the 14th Psalm. You just have to read the first verse of the psalm to realize that. This is someone struggling to find anything of value in the world as it is. This is someone who despairs that there is anyone who looks at life with the eyes of faith. Take the opening line:

That is someone who is so fed up with what is seen from top to bottom in society. There is no one who does good. You know that feeling. You know that response. No one. Utter despair. This is lament at its deepest level.

Or maybe it is a polemic and not a lament. Maybe it is a pronouncement, a prophetic utterance against the failing of the people of God. Notice the opening words “fools say in their hearts.” This isn’t a rant about the new atheists, those who espouse their disgust for belief. This isn’t an argument against the heretics, or secular humanists, or whatever terminology you want to use to describe those folk out there. No, in their hearts they say there is no God. These are people who claim to believe but live as though there is no God. They are functional atheists. They might profess God but show no evidence in their lives that God has any hold over them, any authority for them. They might be leaders; they might be priests or politicians or celebrities claiming to be bringing God back to the nation. But in fact, as evidenced by their actions and their values and their choices, they are opposing the very God they proclaim.

Fools, the psalmist calls them. Not the fool that makes mistakes or stumbles as they walk, not the fool who doesn’t have all the information or can’t think it through. These fools are ones who have chosen to oppose the will of God. The ones, perhaps, who have put themselves and their own purposes in the place of the God they still profess. Their foolishness seems like wisdom in the world, they are getting ahead, they are successful. Yet the wisdom that God seeks is something different. The measure of success is different in God’s kingdom.

Well, we could go on, and the psalmist does go on bewailing what the eyes reveal about how the world works, about who rises to the top, who gets the glory. We could go on, and frankly there is an inclination to do so. We rant and rave, we point fingers and call out sinners as we see them. And maybe there is some need for that. We do need to speak up against the foolishness of the day and those who are advocating foolishness, as risky as that is. But we are at our core proclaimers of good news. That’s our defining identity. The psalmist gives voice to the pain of living in a broken world, but is also able to return to hope.

That hope is in the identity of God. The God we make space for in our inner lives is the God who is a refuge for the poor. The we call upon is the God who promises deliverance, the God of restoration. So we preach the God of Someday. But we preach the God of today, as we share and live into the fortunes that are already ours. The fortunes of community and relationship, of forgiveness and transformation are the signs of God at work in us, they are a part of the good that we are doing for ourselves and for those around us. This good work that the psalmist looks for is good that ripples out. It isn’t a selfish or singular good. It is a communal and redemptive good. The rejoicing comes corporately, the gladness is in the community. And we have tastes of it even now and even here. We rejoice from time to time, we are glad when it is time to come into the house of the Lord, and the house of the Lord, we are told, is any time two or three gather together.

That is the source of our hope. That is the promise we live every day. That is what equips us, not to ignore the foolishness of the world around us, but to not fall into despair because of it. We call upon the Lord of hope, of refuge. That is how we navigate the current foolishness. We live in hope.