Hopelessness Rationalizes "What Is"

Hopelessness rationalizes and adapts to ‘what is.’

A mother who lost her child has to adapt to a world without her son. A teenage pregnancy has to adapt to a world in which dreams are slowing down. A man laid off from work has to adapt to the precariousness of the economy. All of these situations sometimes feel like hope is gone and God is not responding.

Personally, I have never felt more hopeless in my life than the day after my college graduation party. I stopped the night before at a gas station to fill my car up with gas and placed my wallet on top of the car. Sure enough – I filled up with gas and drove away never realizing my wallet, full of hundreds of dollars, was missing. It dawned on me the next day what had happened.

I was forced to adapt to the situation. I was forced to rationalize it. I felt hopeless; I felt as if I messed up; I felt guilty.

Sometimes when we need Christ the most – it just seems like a fool’s hope that he will be there to respond. I mean, God has bigger things to do than to worry about my forgetfulness. It’s my fault, and why would God care anyway?

The Book of Hebrews answers this question by saying Jesus is our Great High Priest. (This may seem inconsequential to God not listening but hear me out)

Praying to Jesus, listening for Jesus to respond is not a fleeting task – it is a holy one. We are not praying to someone who died once upon a time and his stories live on, for Jesus turns toward God on our behalf and toward us on God’s. This conciliation is the role of the high priest.

So why is this important to us? If hopelessness rationalizes and adapts to ‘what is,’ then hope critiques and resists it.

We need to be reminded that Jesus is not just a man who walked the earth, but he is also the son of God who takes on our prayers and supplications and speaks them to God on our behalf. Jesus then listens to God and reports back to us what it is God wants us to do and be.

In short, Jesus is our hope. It’s the hope that allows us to critique and resist what is. Its hope that helps us keep faith, despite the evidence, knowing that only in so doing has the evidence any chance of changing.

Our brokenness, our hurt, our desperation to hear the voice of God subsides when we allow ourselves to engage in a relationship with Christ. God is speaking to us, listening to us, and responding to us. We must allow Jesus the time and room to speak on God’s behalf. If change in ‘what is’ is what we are looking for then we must listen to Jesus.

What good is a high priest if we never go and listen to him/her?

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