Hope

 

There are many awful feelings one can feel, but I think none of them does so much damage to one’s soul as feeling forgotten. That’s the closest point to giving up because it drains you out of every ounce of hope. And hope is up there with faith and love to keep one going in life.

 For a child of God, one for whom all his/her springs are in God (Psalm 87:7) meaning that everything good and lovely has its roots and foundation in the Person of God, when they reach the valley of feeling forgotten by God, their whole world gets dark. All their mechanisms for coping are in God, there’s nothing else they can draw on. Unhealthy? Probably from a humanistic perspective, but not from a Kingdom perspective. God has ruined us forever towards this world. Nothing else will do, except Him. That’s our strongest feature and our worst weakness. How? Well, all the enemy must do to incapacitate us is to convince us that God has forgotten all about us. All he has to do is make us doubt God’s love for us. He will allow us to continue to think God is holy, and sure He cares for His obedient children, so logically, you’re forgotten because you’re a mess. He would act on behalf of a righteous person, but you? He barely tolerates you in general, now that you’re in a valley, He can’t even stand to look at you. Sounds familiar?

I wish I could say, I recognize his lies from miles away and I never fall for them, but sadly no matter how much I train for it, I still fall. Yes, it gets really dark at times. Luckily, I serve The One for whom even the darkness is not dark; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with Him. (Psalm 139:12) He didn’t just send us as lambs amid wolves, He gave us His Spirit and He is the One reminding us of everything we’ve learned in daylight. “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” (John 14:26)

Today I remembered Rahab. She had the worst job and lived in the worst place on earth. There were many places that God wanted destroyed in the land of Canaan, but none came close to the awfulness of Jericho if its epic demise is anything to go by. And there this woman lived. Meaningless existence, day in and day out. A woman with no future. Yet in between many moments she’d rather forget forever, she keeps hearing stories about this nation of slaves from Egypt, whom God, The Only God, has freed and was leading them through the desert towards her land. And this God was so committed to these ex-slaves that He had defeated every enemy that came against them. And Rahab dreams what it would be like to be so loved and so protected. She imagines what it must be like to find favour in the eyes of such a God. But they’re just stories. And she continues her meaningless existence, and the stories keep multiplying. Years go by and she’s long given up her silly dreams. Now she’s just scared because in His determination to do good to His people, this God is bent to destroy everything in His way. And she’s not stupid, she knows she’s in His way too. And then out of nowhere, on a day just like all the other meaningless days before, two men come in her home. They’re Israelites. They’re spies. They’re on the run. She knows she’s in danger just for letting them inside her house, but they’re His people. She looks at them trying to find outstanding features that would make The Most High God so attached to them. But they’re normal people. They have eyes and hands and feet like everybody else. It makes no sense. She’s always thought one would have to be some superhuman to attract that kind of love and devotion. But if they’re normal, maybe then there’s hope even for her… Impossible. She decides to hide them. She lies to save their lives and then she asks them to spare her family. She doesn’t beg for herself, but for those she loves. She asks them to swear to her by The Name of God. They do, so she lets them down from the city wall with a rope. The word chebel in Hebrew can mean rope, but also great pain or ruin. (Joshua 2:15) The spies recognize what it means for her to know she will be killed and still save them. So, they tell her to tie the rope to her window so they will recognize her house and spare them. When they use the word rope, they use the word tikvat in Hebrew (Joshua 2:18), and if anyone is familiar with Israel’s national anthem, Ha Tikvah (the hope) they know tikvat means hope. Where she used despair to save them, they saw hope. The spies return and Jericho falls. The spies save Rahab and her family, and she becomes a part of the people of God. (Joshua 6:22-23) If one reads carefully through the account (Joshua ch. 2-6) it’s painfully obvious that the spies didn’t do anything else in Canaan. They didn’t have any James Bond mission, nor brought back any information that had any bearing whatsoever on the conquest. It’s almost as if God really, really wanted to save Rahab. What’s even better, Rahab marries Salmon, and she has a son, Boaz. She teaches him to be kind, and he will be kind, so kind that he will marry Ruth, a Moabite with no apparent future. Rahab will be in the line of king David and even better, Jesus The Messiah, Son of God.

You might be in an awful place right now. So awful that you know it’s going to end badly. You might not even dare to hope you’ll be spared. After all, you’re not some holy person. I’m not gonna lie, it might get very bad. God might not spare the Jericho you’re in, but the same God that spared the life of a prostitute from a place like Jericho, can surely spare you. Just trust Him. And hope…

 

by Cristina Pop