A Sure Hope
By Naomi Schumack
What do you put your hope in? If your automatic response to that question is Jesus, then congratulations, you�re not the only one. After all, most of you wouldn�t be reading this if you didn�t already believe or at least suspect that the name Jesus was the answer. But that�s not really my question. What I want to know is − how sure is this hope of yours?
For a while now I�ve been asking my friends, non-Christian and Christian alike, what they think hope is. Their responses were mostly vague, but positive. Almost no one thought of hope as something solid and certain. Most liked this word hope; it was a nice word with a vague idea that something good might possibly happen in the future − but that was it. Hope held no certainty, and if you were clinging to it, it was only out of desperation. Hope certainly couldn�t be trusted.
But what of the hope God�s word inspires? God�s hope is not a worldly hope, but a living one which reaches further than this life. The hope we have in Jesus is much more solid than the notion of hope this world offers. This is a hope that has been established in Christ�s death and resurrection, and has been proven through God�s faithful fulfilment of his promises. God�s is a hope that points to eternal life, and is therefore much more precious.
This is the hope described in Hebrews 6:19 as �a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul�. That verse has been echoing in my mind for some time now, and I�ve started to think about what it really says.
Think about what an anchor does when properly doing its job. You�ve got this boat, bobbing on top of the surface, and when the waters are turbulent it keeps the boat where it�s meant to be. But when you�re inside the boat, the first thing you see and feel is the ocean tossing you about. You forget about the anchor because it�s under the surface − out of sight and out of mind. But when the waters calm and you can see clearly again, you realise that the anchor has kept you firmly in place.
I�ll be honest. Right now, the waters aren�t particularly calm for me. In fact, there�s a lot of confusion and quite a bit of sorrow, as I become more and more aware of how broken this world is and how broken those within my world are. People I care about are hurting. And as much as I know in my head that God uses suffering to grow his kingdom and that He is sovereign, it�s still hard to feel that way a lot of the time.
Yet, despite the confusion and the doubts and the weaknesses where I put my hope has not changed. God and his unchanging nature, eternal life, they remain the anchor that my soul clings to. Solid, although not always obvious at first.
My challenge to you is this: when you think about what you put your hope in, will your first thought be Jesus because it�s the right answer, or because it�s sincerely true? And is your hope something vague and unformed, or are you sure of what you hope for? Do you cling to the hope of eternal life? 1 Peter 3:15 says to always be prepared to make a defence to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. How will you respond?
Naomi Schumack is a first year communications and international studies student. She is a short redhead with freckles and glasses which, in her own words, makes her pretty much the perfect nerd. She is also the youngest of five kids.
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