Hope for the Hopeless

Hope

ChristArt

by Spencer D. Gear[1]

This is a “no hope” world. If we want to put people down, we call them “no hopers.” Just think of what has happened to hope during this century. Two world wars, Hitler’s gas ovens and the deaths of 6 million Jews, the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the atomic age ushered in with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing fields of Pol Pot‘s Cambodia. The slaughter in Rwanda, Zaire and Port Arthur (Tasmania, Australia).

Some of the young people I speak to, who are contemplating suicide, tell me they see no future. They have given up hope.

Dr Brendan Nelson, former president of the Australian Medical Association and now a member of Federal Parliament, wrote a letter to The Australian newspaper in which he said:

“The thematic currency of youth suicide is our failure to transmit a sense of belonging and meaningful purpose to young people. We have created a culture in which young people frequently feel they have nothing other than themselves in which to believe. The mesh of values that held Australian society together 30 years ago – God, king and country – has been systematically dismantled, leaving only a vacuum. The price of our shallowness is being paid by our children”.[2]

When the apostle Peter wrote to persecuted Christians scattered across Asia Minor, he affirmed their “living hope.” Pie-in-the-sky stuff? Never!

It is a living hope only because Jesus is alive. It is a hope that will not die because of the one who conquered death through his resurrection.

This is the living hope for which our young yearn. Who will tell them of the hope in Jesus?

As Bill and Gloria Gaither’s song puts it: “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow; because He lives, all fear is gone; because I know Who holds the future and life is worth the living just because He lives”.[3]

 

Notes:


[1]At the time I wrote this brief article for a local newspaper (under authorisation from the local Ministers’ Fraternal), I was the co-ordinator and counsellor of a youth counselling service in Bundaberg, Qld., Australia and a member of the Bundaberg Ministers’ Association.

[2] Letters to the editor, “Suicide the price of our shallowness,” Dr Brendan Nelson, Federal Liberal Party member for Bradfield, NSW, Weekend Australian, January 11-12, 1997, p. 20.

[3] Performed here by the Gaither Vocal Band, available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOZ6dQhGcCw (Accessed 23 December 2013).

 
Copyright © 2013 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 12 November 2015.