So much hopelessness. So much despair. How is it possible that a people that has so much in the way of comfort and convenience can also seem to have so little to make it all worthwhile? And how can it be that with so much that can bring help and benefit to us that there is so little fulfillment for so many? What is the root from which springs the discontent that characterizes us? Where is the source for the overwhelming angst from which we suffer and which threatens to suffocate any capacity for a peace that lasts and the joy for which we crave?
In the middle of a world awash with “cool stuff” and inundated with knowledge, what causes a man or woman to take his or her own life? Or, more horrifying still, to plot and then act to take the lives of others as gruesomely as can be imagined in the soul that is divorced from its Creator?
Is it poverty? Is it social oppression? Could it be a lack of education? Or is it something else? Something far deeper and more basic to our essence as human beings? Well, whatever we may assume about the roles of the above social ills, they themselves do not “cause” a man or woman to languish in hatred or despair, until some awful deed is done.
Nor do the things for which all the world runs after solve, in of themselves, the problem of hopelessness. Neither can they provide us a destination that makes life worth enduring with all its aches and pains (emotional as well as physical). How often have we seen that even rich and attractive people, who have successfully obtained “the American dream”, can still lose hope and purpose, slipping into the clutches of their own destruction?
But each and every loss, whether rich or poor, famous or unknown, is a tragedy. Each life that is ended in such bitter straits is a sad and tragic story and begs the question “how could this have been stopped?”
For there to be healing in a heart that reaches a point of such final desperation that only a tremendous act of violence can seem to address it, one must get to the source of the problem itself. One must recognize that it is going to take far more than the solutions to which we too quickly run for help heedless of the real sickness from which comes all these other ills.
While education is a matchless tool that helps people find the plot of ground in life from which the rest of life may be addressed, it isn’t enough. Standing against social injustice is right and good, but doing so cannot give us an enduring hope if it doesn’t set free the soul that is oppressed by the bondage of sin. And though God Himself is a refuge for the needy (see Isaiah 25:4), our attempt to help the poor only has real meaning if our souls are first reconnected with our Maker.
What then is the problem from which all these other problems stem? What is the source of spiritual infection that contaminates our land and poisons our hope? It is found in our disconnect from God. Without Him we cannot have real meaning or purpose. In rejecting Him, we’ve rejected the real reason for which we were created: loving fellowship forever with God. When we refuse His presence and lordship in our lives, we’ve refused the only antidote there is for the poisons of hopelessness and despair coursing through the veins of the world.
“As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn’t have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you’re proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end” (Romans 6:21 The Message).
So socialized are we in the twenty-first century to the idea that we don’t really need God that we’ve clamped a fatal kink in our one and only lifeline. But we really do need God. And we need Him as He is, not as we think we want Him to be. We need God to be above and beyond the limits of both our physical universe, but also above and beyond the limits of our understanding. We need a God Who can love us with a truly limitless love, the likes of which are perhaps found in limited ways in caring and loving mothers and fathers.
We need a God Who does what is right… all the time. Not just when it is convenient and even when it means running the risk of being misunderstood. We need a God Who doesn’t have to run to His creation, seeking to please everyone and hoping to not offend anyone.
“Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mountains of God; Your judgments are like the great deep; man and beast You save, O LORD. How precious is Your steadfast love, O God! The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of Your wings” (Psalm 36:5-7 ESV).
When we come to the Lord, ready to receive Him and the gift of His Son, Jesus, we come to the whole point of life and the one true door we have for entering into an everlasting place of joy and peace. It’s true that many will look at that door, and turn away, preferring the kingdom of self-will along with its storehouse of miseries and despairs. But for all those who trust in Him, there is a hope that pain and even physical death cannot take away.
“Now that you’ve found that you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for your sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master” (Romans 6:22-23 The Message).
Copyright © Thom Mollohan
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