Hope

Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”

My friends, we have wandered into forbidden paths. We have placed ourselves in a vulnerable spot. And consequently we are in danger of being plucked!

During the last presidential campaign a lot of mileage was squeezed out of the word “hope.” Unfortunately the person doing the squeezing was using the word merely as a crass campaign tactic. He was employing it only for the sake of arousing pleasant emotions within the populace, pleasant emotions he believed would then be associated with him.

To some, however, the word hope is valued more highly than that and is held in much greater esteem. To them it is a word not to be carelessly tossed about, for hope is what people cling to when they have little else. No principled person would ever think of employing that term solely for the purpose of enticing discouraged and despondent men and women into believing that meaningful help was on the way when it wasn’t. But regrettably that is how low some politicians in this country will stoop in order to get themselves elected to high political office.

Of course, all who are acquainted with the Bible and believe its words know better than to place their full hope and trust in prevaricating politicians--or any mortal man, for that matter. The Bible warns: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.” We also read: “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.”

I will pose a question. If the man who puts his trust in the Lord is blessed, is the man who puts his trust in man cursed? I don’t know, but considering what is currently going on around us, I think the possibility is well worth considering.

A Founding Father and our country’s second president John Adams wrote: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Adams understood that only those who know right from wrong, those capable of properly regulating their own conduct and affairs, could be expected to live harmoniously, peacefully and successfully under a national government as small and limited as the one outlined in our constitution. Immoral men, he knew, would require a stricter and more comprehensive form of government, a government not unlike the Frankenstein that has been under construction for over 70 years in this country and is now nearing completion.

Jesus said: “In this world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”

So long as we are in this world, complete and permanent happiness will elude us. Evil-minded men, or even well-intentioned men, may from time to time step forward offering alluring ideas and promises, but we always will find those men, whatever their inner motives, to be woefully ill equipped to transform our world into anything remotely resembling a Garden of Eden.

Our founders gave us, as Adams pointed out, a constitution possessing just enough power to adequately govern moral and religious men and women. Nevertheless the government it underpins worked marvelously well for a great many years and spawned a previously unheard of level of security and prosperity for the vast majority of our nation’s citizens. Yet despite this huge body of historical evidence, there are many, including our current president, who now see our constitution and government as “inadequate.” But the question is: Does the inadequacy lie in the constitution and government or in us?

I believe a close inspection of ourselves and our nation’s leaders will confirm that it lies in us. A large and ever-increasing number of us lack the moral and ethical qualities our ancestors possessed in abundance. Americans gradually have changed over the years. And in so doing we have rendered ourselves unfit to live under that great banner of liberty written by our founding fathers. It is time to humble ourselves and admit that we have permitted our political leaders to transform themselves into gods, false gods to whom we foolishly have acquiesced and followed deep into the wilderness.

But be of good cheer! There still is before us one sure way out. If we yearn to one day possess real security and genuine happiness, we need only to shut our ears to those who are garrulously foisting upon us a debased hope, a hope that is nothing more than a crude forgery of the real thing, and begin listening once again to the voice of He who has overcome the world, He who continues patiently to offer us hope that is both untarnished and authentic.

And if we will listen to His message and try diligently to obey, then whatever hardships may befall us, we will, like the Christians of old, be able to proclaim with confidence: “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

Without question and without fail there will be tribulation in this world--some natural and some man-made. But we may rest assured that we always will be much better prepared to cope with and endure those times of distress and uncerainty if our hope for a brighter future is rooted not in politicians and government but in God.