SUNDAY SERMON: Hope is the forward gear when dealing with uncertainty
Having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering confidence. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH
What you need to know:
- A wise man once compared navigating life to driving along a road where you are allowed to handle the steering wheel while some hidden force beyond your control takes care of the accelerator and the brakes.
- The road is one you’ve never travelled. Some stretches drag on for hundreds of kilometres without a single bend or hill. The tarmac lies flat and straight. You would like to speed up, but the car crawls along.
- Then you find yourself driving into a tunnel, only to emerge on a sharp curve that leads down a steep hill surrounded by rocks and trees on both sides.
What will the year 2019 bring? What will happen to you? The gift of prophecy is one we all tend to envy. Many people complain: “If only I knew what to expect, I could plan for it!”
Instead, God asks us to trust him. Sometimes that’s easy. At other times, we understand why sacred Scripture praised Abraham and calls him “our father in faith”. As it says in the Letter to the Romans: “In hope, he believed against hope that he should become the father of many nations.”
The text about “hoping against hope” tells us that Abraham kept his faith in God even when, humanly speaking, it did not look as if any of God’s promises were going to come true.
A wise man once compared navigating life to driving along a road where you are allowed to handle the steering wheel while some hidden force beyond your control takes care of the accelerator and the brakes.
The road is one you’ve never travelled. Some stretches drag on for hundreds of kilometres without a single bend or hill. The tarmac lies flat and straight. You would like to speed up, but the car crawls along.
Then you find yourself driving into a tunnel, only to emerge on a sharp curve that leads down a steep hill surrounded by rocks and trees on both sides. Precisely when you would like to hit the brakes, the car speeds up. Trying to steer and keep the car on the road absorbs every ounce of energy you have.
By the way, that’s why we must refrain from judging other people when we see them “fly off the road”, into a ditch or worse.
During this Christmas season, remember Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary. Just when they were probably planning to go back to Nazareth, after the Baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem, an angel appears in a dream telling Joseph: “Get up, take the child with you and escape into Egypt.” If we were caught in that same situation, we might be tempted to complain: “God, how can you allow things to go so completely wrong that we have to flee for our lives? Why don’t you use your almighty power to fix this so we can go home?”
There are times when it’s easy to trust God. It won’t always be so easy. I cannot tell you what the year 2019 will be like.
I can only tell you, quoting the words of St Paul in Romans: “In hope, we already have salvation; in hope not visibly present, or we should not be hoping. Nobody goes on hoping for something which is already visible. But having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering confidence.”
