CHAPTER 16
HOPE

What Would Sarge Do?

            German mortar fire pounded the Belgian village throughout the freezing night.  Boxer and Max were hunkered down in the snow behind a wall.  Every time a mortar landed, the entire squad would jump.  So far, nobody had been hit.  "What's the point?"  Max grumbled.  "They don't even know where we are."
            "I think they just want to pin us down and make us miserable.  Mission accomplished," Boxer replied into the darkness.
            Shortly before dawn, the mortars fell silent.  Morning broke slowly and drearily.  Their new sergeant, a guy who had automatically stepped into Sarge's shoes based on the chain of command, began rousting the men.  "On your feet! Let's go!  Command says the enemy fell back during the night, leaving only their mortars to make us think they were still there.  Time to move!"
            Max was immovable.  "This guy says the same things as the sarge, but it just doesn't have the same ring."
            "Doesn't matter, Max. He's the sarge now.  But...yeah. Nobody can wear Sarge's boots.  Just too big."
            Gradually the squad shook the kinks out of their stiff limbs, gathered their weapons and gear, and began clomping forward.  Max didn’t budge.  When he had re-enlisted for a second tour of duty, he thought he had already seen it all.  He was experienced, he was hardened, and he was lucky to have escaped injury in his first tour.  But this second tour had worn him down. Sarge had been the one to pull him through again and again. The sarge had been his anchor.
            "Are you coming?" Boxer said as he gazed down the street.  "Scouts say the place is a ghost town.  Nobody home."
            "Uh, in a moment. Go on.  I'll bring up the rear."
            "I'm not supposed to leave you.  Regulations."
            "I haven't followed them before, so why start now?  Besides, I outrank you.  Git!"
            Max watched Boxer march away, not really knowing why he felt he should hang back, and not really caring. He sat for a long while, enjoying his solitude.  Eventually the cold motivated him to move.  He creaked to his feet, every joint complaining, and began walking slowly through the empty town. Feeling that familiar urge, he stopped in front of a ransacked shop and lit a cigarette. The house on the left of it was untouched, as if its owners were gone on a vacation.  Several mortar rounds had collapsed the house on the right.  Splintered beams and boards were strewn about in heaps.  Max took a drag on his cigarette and noticed something white sticking out from under a fallen section of wall.  He bent to lift the debris, but startled and stepped back.  It was a baby’s shoe.  Next to it was a miniature bare foot.
            Max stood for a long while with his cigarette dangling from his lower lip.  Puffs of cigarette smoke alternated with puffs of steamy breath in the cold morning air.  It was as if all the losses of this second tour landed on him at the sight of this tiny baby buried in the debris.   Bo, Lew, Kovac, Senelli, Krause...the sarge.  When would it end?
He considered desertion.  He considered eating his gun.  As he stood transfixed by the vision of tiny feet, Sarge's last words came floating back to him. "Cover me, Max.  If you don't, I'll be dead before I cross the street.  Cover me, Max.  Cover me..."
            "What would the sarge do?"  Max asked the universe, but he already knew the answer.  He knelt down, lifted the edge of the fallen wall and pulled the baby out.  It was a little boy dressed in blue, as if he were going for a carriage ride.  Max wrapped his own blanket around the small bundle, leaving the face out as if the boy were still alive.  "So gray, so cold." Max whispered, "C'mon, little buddy.  I'm not leavin' you here."
            Max threw his rifle over his shoulder and began to march after the column, not eager to catch up.  Slowly, the clouds began to dissipate as he walked out of the deserted town and down the road, following the trail of boot prints and cigarette butts.  In a strange but welcome quirk of the weather, the sun came out.  Max began to sweat as he marched, cradling his silent, motionless bundle.
            Eventually the heat forced Max to stop to take a swig from his canteen.  He squatted on a tree stump, maneuvering the baby into the crook of his arm.  A crow called from across a fallow farm field laced with snow.  He looked down at the little face.  "Hopeless, just like me," Max said to no one.  As if in refutation not only of his words but also of his entire perception of reality, the tiny eyelids opened a slit, then flickered. A pair of deep blue eyes stared him straight in the face. 

THE BASIS OF OUR HOPE
Romans 8:14-25

            Human beings cannot live without hope.  We yearn for good things and often do not get them, but we can live on the yearning itself. It keeps us going.  What happens, however, to a person when even the yearning for good things in life evaporates?  That's a person who has lost a reason to live and is in grave danger.
            There are two aspects of hope.  One meaning of the word "hope" refers to the thing in which we are placing our hope.  It may be a job, winning the lottery, good looks, government, natural abilities, or a list of attainments.  What most people discover is that the attainment of most of the things they hope for is a huge letdown.  Attainment unmasks the reality that earthly things do not ultimately satisfy. The human heart was created to long for God and the things of God, yet this longing remains a mystery to most.  For the person who chooses not to look to God, there is always another earthly hope to be substituted.  When we are children, we seek to gain the prerogatives of adulthood. As young adults, we move into the search for success, and when that does not satisfy, we move into middle age to the search for significance. All of these strivings are earthly, all destined to fail us.  People keep trying, however, because short of looking for God, no other option, save suicide, remains.
            The second meaning of the word "hope" refers to our experience of hope.  It is the choice to hang on to our future dreams and to be encouraged by them.  It is subjective and emotional, but very real.  We observe people seeking the emotional component of hope as they leave marriages for other spouses, as they switch jobs, and as they try expensive entertainments.  Gambling may be the addiction of choice for hope junkies because the experience can be repeated just by sliding another coin into the slot machine.  These earthly things will never satisfy.
            Paul the apostle wrote to the Romans about the only true and reliable objective basis for hope in chapter 8:14-17. "For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.  For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, 'Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” Our adoption as children of God through the death and resurrection of Christ is the only worthy basis for hope because it is the work of God.
            Adopted children of God are led in life by the Holy Spirit of God himself. They have the spirit of fear driven out by a direct relationship with God as Father.  They receive the assurance of the testimony of the Holy Spirit within the hearts of their new identity. They receive the promise of a heavenly inheritance that is more real than anything on earth is. They receive the promise of glorified bodies, which will work right for the first time and for all time.  Adopted children of God actually get the thing for which every human being yearns: God himself.
            This hope hinges on one condition, namely, "if indeed we suffer with Him."  How satisfying do you think it was for Jesus Christ to save the world?  Ultimately satisfying! How much suffering was associated with that satisfaction?  The worst suffering anyone ever endured. Jesus, a righteous, sinless man, had to take the sins of the whole world upon himself, and accept the punishment for them all. Therefore, the only way to the greatest satisfaction we will ever know is to bind ourselves by faith to the Christ who gave all for us.  Christ is the only reliable object of hope on earth.

LIVING IN A RUINED WORLD

            Grasping the true object of hope does not end the struggle.  Believing in Christ does not instantly teleport us to paradise.  As Paul explained in the following verses--even though we lock on to confident hope in Christ, we must still live in ruined bodies on a ruined planet. "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.  And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:18-23).
            Paul's first cry is that no matter what suffering there may be, the satisfaction of our hope in Christ is worth it! He seems to be picturing cosmic scales.  The image Paul seeks to paint in our minds is the greatest possible inequality of weights on the balance pans: a speck of dust representing our present sufferings on one side weighed against a planet representing what Christ did on the other!  Paul cries out, "It's not even a worthy comparison!  These sufferings, no matter how bad they are now, will be blown away by the fulfillment of our hope in Christ in heaven!"
            Many people today have the idea that nature is virginal, untouched, and pure.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  When mankind fell into sin, all creation was "subjected to futility" and was placed by God under "slavery to corruption."  We have a responsibility under God to take good care of the earth as we now have it, but we must know it is already in a ruined condition that is our fault!  God describes creation as groaning.
            Our physical bodies are in the same condition.  We receive our bodies at conception in a ruined condition.  Every day we are alive, this condition just gets worse.  Why did the famous philosopher Voltaire teach the continual improvement of all things, as epitomized by the silly-sounding motto: "Things are getting better and better every day in every way?"  Because he was driven to deny the reality, which smacks us all in the face, that we are living on a ruined planet in ruined bodies, and both are in decline all the time.  Voltaire was in revolt against the divine decree that placed all of creation in corruption as a consequence of the fall of man.
            The job of hope in such a situation is to keep us afloat until we are taken to Christ and given new, glorified bodies.  Our "revealing" as adopted sons and daughters of God to the universe is yet future, and at that time, creation will undergo a redemption of its own in the millennial reign of Christ. In the meantime, we rejoice to have received the Holy Spirit to indwell us even as we continue to groan.  Now, the groaning is not complaining, because we are commanded to "do all things without grumbling or complaining" (Phil. 2:14).  We groan because we are suffering in wrecked bodies in a wrecked world. But Jesus is coming back for us! That is our blessed hope!

PERSEVERING IN HOPE

            Hope is the key to living among the ruins.  People who do not know God seek the subjective experience of hope in insubstantial things, but Christians must avoid the danger of the opposite, namely, to have every reason to hope but failing to enjoy it.  We must not only know the solid basis for our hope in Christ, we must choose to fix our hope on it by an act of the will and choose to be encouraged by it.  As Paul wrote in the next two verses: "For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?  But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it" (Romans 8:24-25).
            You see, we're like an heir who does not receive his inheritance until his twenty-first birthday, but whose life changes immediately upon hearing the will read.  We're like high-school seniors who have finished all the requirements for graduation, but who have not yet received their diplomas. Life changes even though the future reward has not yet been received.
            The reality of our inheritance in Christ is our possession, and we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as earnest money.  Still, we look forward to the fulfillment of it.  We must choose to live in the settled reality of God's present and future blessings, which cannot be taken away from us.  We need to choose to be encouraged by the reliability of God and the wonder of all he has in store for those who trust him.  We're his children!  As Paul wrote: "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?" (Romans 8:32).  This is the logic of our hope.  God has made our future blessing a certainty; therefore, we have every reason to persevere in our hope in him through every difficult thing that happens to us on earth.  A hopeless Christian is a person who has forgotten his or her identity.

            The soldier Max is a man teetering on the brink of hopelessness.  Everywhere he looks, he sees sorrow, loss, and pain.  What's the point of living like that? But God, whom Max has not yet met, sent him a message of hope:  Not everything is as it seems. There is life to be found in the wreckage of this world. Out of the splinters of a bombed house, Max retrieved a little body and decided to hang on to him in spite of all the death around him. Voila! After a long march in the warmth of the sun's rays and Max’s arms, the little eyes flickered open and a vision of life arose amid the devastation! With that little flickering life, hope revived.
            We live among the ruins of a sin-devastated planet.  Into these ruins, the Father sent his only Son, in the form of a baby, to bring us the only hope of mankind--the only reliable reason to go on living.  As an adult, he was crucified and counted as dead, but then the shock came.  He is alive!  Resurrected! Have you received this hope?  I advise you to bundle it up, hold it close to you, and hang on!