Last Exit Before Oblivion

Lu wrote a little piece about how she'd learned some things. I asked for details. Eventually she got around to writing the story. (Clever, Lu. The story's title is "The Voice of Hope Inside," but the file name is "so_you_want_det.html." I didn't know you could do that.) In summary, she talks about how hope gets built up and then dashed. Again and again, the world just batters away.

The story resonates with me. What keeps people from giving up?

I gave up on many things. Now that God has a hand in my life there ought to be more hope. There is, of a rather intellectual kind; I know that God loves me. He proves it to me every day. The feeling of hope is, however, very deeply buried. I just don't want it. I don't want to feel the dawning of a new day because as soon as I do that something will happen. A snowstorm comes, or my internal sniper shoots the new idea to pieces, or the once-solid ground will turn to greasy mud and I'll slide back to where I was.

I just know it's a lie. Hope doesn't exist except in my own hands, and I know how fragile and incapable they are.

If you believe in the kind of Christianity that is built on the idea of "God helps those who help themselves," you'll say there's no way this will work. I'm making God angry. God doesn't believe that, as evinced in my life. Lack of faith is seen as a deadly sin by many people. Lack of faith, to God, is just another challenge for him to overcome in his truly inimitable way. If you don't have the foundation, he will build it. If you don't have the foundation for a foundation, he will start there. "Lord, I believe. Please help my unbelief."

It seems that God wants me to feel this hope. Feel the hope that life really can get better. He has been working on it for a long time, and he brought it to mind today, something like three weeks after Lu's story. I'm not responsible for how nutty that is. I'm just responsible for listening, and going on.

How do you teach hope to the hopeless? I guess I'm going to find out.