A Pepper Grinder Post

You Are My Hope

I just saw The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (the one with Andrew Garfield playing Spider Man). I thought some of the movie was typical action movie fare; when I turned off the credibility checker in my brain, it was kind of fun. I thought some of the non-action parts of the movie were quite well done. Do you know what I found the saddest part of the movie, in some ways? It was the part with Peter Parker's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy (played by Emma Stone). It wasn't the part where she dies at the end; it was her valedictorian speech. She told her class that they must never lose hope. She said they must "become hope."

I'll admit, it sounded kind of inspiring. But you have to ask the question, hope in what? In yourself? We don't have to look far to see the great evil that even well-intentioned people can commit. Hope in the human race? Our kids' biology classes assure them that the human race was something that occurred purely by chance, and that people's behavior is governed by their genes and their instincts, rather than by free choice. Hope in life itself? Life can be very disappointing. Hope in hope? Now we're really getting circular.

And yet, according to the Bible, hope IS a good thing. It, along with faith and love, is one of the three things that will endure. But what is biblical hope? I want to look at Psalm 39:6-7 to get some idea of this. Here's my translation of the passage:

A man is only a walking shadow; a noisy mist. He piles up riches without knowing who will get them.

But what am I looking for, Lord? You are my hope.

The guy who wrote this psalm was not having an easy time of it. He starts out the psalm determined to keep his mouth shut whenever wicked people are around, presumably because he knows they will twist his words and use them against him. Doing this, however, made him feel like he was going to burst. When he speaks, it is to ask the Lord to show him what a fleeting thing his life is. God apparently answers, because the next thing he says is the first verse in the passage I translated above. He sees that while people may move around and make some noise, it doesn't make much difference. Even if they accomplish things, who knows who will enjoy the fruits of their labors?

Many of what are called "lament psalms" start out expressing how bad things are, but then turn those emotions on their head by expressing trust and confidence in God's deliverance. At first glance, it seems like the second half of the passage above is headed the same way. The psalmist has gone from misery to a realization of how transitory his life is, and is now finishing up by expressing his hope in God. But if we read on, it doesn't quite work out that way. In the next verse, he asks God to save him from his sins--that seems reasonable. But then he goes on to plead with God to stop punishing him, and to remind God that "each man is but a breath." He begs God not to ignore his weeping, and finally concludes the psalm with this melancholy thought:

"Look away from me, that I may rejoice again before I depart and am no more." (NIV)

Wow. Pass the Prozac, please.

My point here is not that the psalmist was a Gloomy Gus, but that his expression of hope is NOT coming after things have gotten better, but is given right in the thick of it, when things are at their worst.

So why does the writer interrupt the expression of his misery to express hope? Is he trying to cheer himself up? If so, we have to conclude that it didn't work so well. Is he trying to stir himself to go out and change the world in spite of how bad things look? I don't think so. I don't think we can really understand what the psalmist was doing unless we understand how biblical hope differs from what we often think of as hope. Let's dig into that one hopeful verse more deeply to see what's going on.

The writer starts out by asking what he is looking for. It's clear from the context, he is contrasting himself with the people who go around piling up loot, which will end up being enjoyed by someone else. He is not looking for riches to fulfill him, but something different. The verb I've translated as "looking for" carries the sense of waiting for something with eager expectation. For example, in Job 7:2, here is how the same Hebrew word is translated:

Like a slave longing for the evening shadows, or a hired man waiting eagerly for his wages, (NIV)

The hired man is not hoping to get paid in the sense that we often use the word. He is expecting to get paid, and he is looking forward to it.

And now the psalmist writes, "You are my hope." Like the word I translated as "looking for," the Hebrew word I've translated as "hope" has more of a sense of certainty to it than "hope" often has in English. For example, in Proverbs 10:28 we read, "The prospect of the righteous is joy, but the hopes of the wicked come to nothing." The words that the NIV translates as "prospect" and "hopes" are two different words in Hebrew, but the one that is the same as the one used in Psalm 39 is not "hopes," but "prospect." The hopes of the wicked, like many of the things hoped for in the modern sense, do NOT come to pass, but we know that the prospect of the righteous will come to pass, even if it is not in this life. Another place this same Hebrew word is used is in Proverbs 13:12 which says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." Why would having what you hoped for being put off make you feel sick, unless you were really expecting it?

But even more important than "hope" meaning "eager expectation" rather than "wishful thinking," is what the hope is placed in. The key is that the hope is not placed in a what but in a whom. "You are my hope." The whole psalm is a conversation with God, so there is no doubt to whom he is referring. He is saying that the Lord of the Universe, who has desired such a close relationship with his people that he is on a first name basis with them, is his hope and his expectation. His hopes are pinned on Yahweh, who is totally real, totally powerful, and totally loving.

This is not some vague kind of wishful thinking which can leave a valedictorian hanging dead at the end of a spider web because of the actions of a disturbed young man on a flying skate board. This is not some kind of pop psychology which sees hope as a way to prime the pump so that we can accomplish great things. This is not some kind of modern-day magic that pulls rabbits of happiness out of the black top hat of despair. This is something firm and reliable, because it is based on the one who is more firm and reliable than anything else in the universe.

The vague kind of hope about which Gwen Stacy talked will often disappoint us. But here is what Paul said about the kind of hope we see in Psalm 39:

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:5, NIV)

We can have this hope when we are feeling good, but we can also have it when we are in despair and just wish God would stop whacking us. If we have committed our lives to God, we can be confident that he will take care of us. We may not see it right away, but we know that it is coming. We can depend on it, because it is not based on the goodness of our characters, but on the goodness of His character.

- Pepper
Posted 2021-03-21

*Image Credits: Hopeful man looking up taken by Marcelo Mokrejs.