This is a topic I’ve written about many, many times, but these past couple of days have highlighted for me our desperate need for hope. Without hope, we are lost. There’s not a person alive who doesn’t hope for something, and if there is a person alive who has lost hope, they are usually in a sorry position. The problem is that hope appears as a very fragile friend. What I’ve learned is that most of us have placed hope in the wrong things. Often in our lives, we have ‘hopes.’ We might hope to meet someone special, we hope that we get a promotion or perhaps a better job, we put our hope in an investment, we hope that we will remain healthy, or we hope that we might reach a level of life that will allow us to have more time and more comfort. Perhaps our hope is in our family, our friendships, our holidays, our charity work, or our sports team. Maybe we place all our hopes on a dream future, on the universe ‘manifesting’ the things that we long for.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Not to be super depressing, but what we will have learned if we have come anywhere close to realizing any of these hopes is that while they are attractive, they never seem to fully satisfy us in and of themselves. Let’s imagine the perfect scenario with all of those hopes realized. We met that super special someone, and we’ve been married for a while, our new job has better hours and good pay, the investment gave us a great return, our health is looking good, we have been able to travel more, our family is doing great in school, our friends are really kind and funny, the charity is helping people, and our sports team has won the league multiple times.

Sounds good right?

But whilst I’m guessing none of us have ever had a perfect clean sweep like this (if you have, please let me know) even if we did, we would realize that none of this would be enough. None of it would truly give us hope. None of them, in and of themselves, can fill the hope void within us.

But why? Well, I’ve come up with three sub-reasons and one big reason why they will never be enough.

Sub Reason 1 – They are insatiable – none of the things we seem to hope for have completion in them. They will never deliver enough. Each of those things, when we attain them to some degree, will always point to another similar hill further down the road which we convince ourselves will deliver what we long for. When is enough money enough? It never is. When is enough time enough? It never will be. Will the next promotion be enough? It won’t be. In fact, most people in the world haven’t found satisfaction when their hope is in stuff, and each of those people have varying amounts of money, time, and jobs. If none of them have found hope and satisfaction there, even with their varied amounts of it, I think we can safely conclude that hope can’t be satisfied in those things.

Sub Reason 2 – They are imperfect – each of the things we seem to hope for have flaws in them. Any hope we have in a person, including ourselves, is incapable of being all that we hoped for because we make mistakes. Our health, or the health of others, we know is not something that is guaranteed, even if we eat all the right foods and take all the correct supplements. Investments can rise and fall based on world events that are far from perfect. Jobs, sports teams, holidays, projects, and clubs all have the ability to let us down. Even our own families can make major errors. None of them are a guaranteed ‘perfect journey,’ and whilst we can enjoy them and love them, we cannot depend on them to deliver something that they are incapable of carrying. You cannot rest a heavy building on a cracked foundation; the weight will always cause a collapse over time. We can’t try and build something perfect on top of imperfection.

Sub Reason 3 – They are finite – each of the things we have mentioned will finish at some point. People, unfortunately, don’t live forever; money can run out, jobs end, time ticks on, and we’ve already talked about our imperfect health. Putting our hope in something that is time-limited is a fool’s game. The only way I can think to illustrate this is for us to cast our minds back to the most perfect holiday we’ve ever had. Perhaps it came at a time when you were so tired, so ready for the break. When you arrived, the food was amazing, the people were so fun, and the weather was perfect. We would think and say out loud how we wish we could stay in this moment forever. This holiday was worth waiting for, and we thought it would fix everything that was wrong about life before the trip. Then, as the days go on, we have the realization that the holiday is coming to an end and we have to return to our ‘normal’ life. We begin to feel a weight on us, even though the same weather, food, and people are around us. We realize that while we have enjoyed the holiday, it didn’t and couldn’t be hope itself. Hope should endure, but this holiday won’t. Holidays are fun but they are finite. Holidays aren’t hope! Putting our hope in something that is time-limited is a fool’s game.

And finally the BIG reason that the others all fill into which explains why these ‘things’ will never be enough for us…….

They don’t contain hope – the reality is none of these ‘dreams’ or ‘hopes’ actually contain hope, and if they don’t contain hope, then they can’t deliver hope. You see hope is something that is not tangible in the way that other ‘stuff’ we can hold is. It’s not gold or silver, which in their rarity, can be searched out and held. It is unique in its existence and feels like a paradox. It is abundant but can feel scarce, it is durable but can feel fragile, it is infinite but can seem fleeting, it is uncontainable because of its scale but yet can feel so small. Hope cannot be bottled or obtained. Like a precious gas that can’t be seen but only detected, hope only can be found when it is contained in the perfect receptacle. In my experience, there is only one receptacle perfect enough to contain it.

Jesus. Jesus not only contains hope, He is hope.

Every search for hope outside of Jesus will be fruitless. It might deliver moments of joy or relief but the search will never deliver what we are truly longing for.

….the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory Colossians 1:26-27