Hope, Spring and Eternity

I didn't title this blog "Hope Springs Eternal" because I've never known what that means. Does it mean you should always hope for something or you should keep on hoping for the same thing even if it's not happening or that you will keep on hoping, despite your best efforts to give up and move on because you can't help yourself? I guess it doesn't matter what it means (other than forcing me to write a run-on sentence to try to decipher the phrase). What I want to reflect on is the relationship between hope and eternity.

I grew up a fan of the Red Sox because I lived in New England and many of my friends rooted for the Yankees. This is called being a contrarian, and I have paid mightily for the privilege: over 40 years of rooting without a championship, to be exact. Every spring I anxiously anticipated the start of another season and the chance to beat the Yankees. Every year I was disappointed... until 2004, when miraculously the Red Sox came back from 3 games down to the Yankees to beat them 4 straight and then win the 2004 World Series. Now that I live in Chicago, this is what allows me to root for the Cubs since I do not see it as hopeless, merely unlikely.

But hoping for something and having hope seem to me to be two different things. I can hope that Duke gets their act together and does well in the NCAA tournament this year, but if it doesn't happen, my life will not be appreciably different (except for the abuse I will receive from my "friends"). However, if I do not have Hope in my life; if I do not believe there is a purpose and focus to my life; if I do not believe there is an ultimate satisfaction to my yearning and striving; if I do not have hope that there is a God who cares about and loves me, then all the hopes (with little "h"s) do not mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Last week was great week in strengthening my Hope. I was able to speak to the students at the Trinity Forum Academy and attend their Integrity Weekend Conference. The two keynote speakers at the conference were Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God and Kelly Monroe Kullberg, author of Finding God at Harvard and founder of The Veritas Forum. These are two of the most distinguished and intelligent people I have ever met, and yet their distingishing characteristics were joy, inquisitiveness and humility. As I heard their presentations and spoke to each about the needs of our children and the challenges facing Christian educators, I realized there are many, many wonderful Christians in various careers and disciplines who are using every bit of their God-given talent to pass down wisdom to the next generation. And as we worshipped together on Sunday morning and I watched Dr. Collins and Ms. Kullberg play their guitars as we sang together "Be Thou My Vision", I felt once again that Hope, this time as it was shared in that room: that a God bigger than we can imagine, has done more than we can ever know, to provide an eternity for us that is far more wonderful and wondrous than we could ever conceive.