Hope While You Cope

If your brain is at all like mine, it has a stubborn (but understandable) tendency to get stuck when it’s experiencing pain, emptiness, and despair. We can’t just fast-forward to see our happy endings, which leaves us with a gap between reality and resolution.

Before He died, Jesus told His friends that He’d be back and that death wouldn’t have the final word (John 14:3). But when He was crucified, they still abandoned all hope. And who can blame them? I think you and I will probably spend most of our lives feeling like Jesus’ friends that day—disappointed and desperate, stuck in the thick of pre-resurrection darkness. But just like Jesus’ friends, we’ve also been told that all of our stories, and the world’s big story, will end in redemption. After all, the Christ story extends beyond a single time or place. It’s the totally universal yet deeply personal story of against-all-odds hope.

Relying on God’s promise to make all things new will probably never become reflexive for you or me. So we’ve got to resolve to live as resurrection people, people who know in their bones that there is life beyond our losses and hope beyond the “Good Fridays” of life. When we can’t tap into second-chance hope from our own experiences, we are invited to borrow the hope of Jesus’ second-chance life.

No matter how deeply we know and love the gospel story, true joy, and peace can seem inaccessible on our darkest days. But we can choose to practice resurrection hope, even when we can’t quite feel it. Hope while you cope, I call it. And it’s a whole lot of work. But does it pay off? You know it does.

Despite the best and most detailed plans I can make, both the pain and beauty of my life continue to surprise me. While the specifics of my story’s ending remain a mystery for now, the character of God does not. I can plan on His resurrection power being present with me now and meeting me at the end. And that gives me so much hope for today and tomorrow.

God, some days hope feels out of reach, and I wonder why the sky remains so dark. I need you to remind me that resurrection is a reality, that a new day will dawn. I want to trust Your pattern of second-chance life and your character of love, even when my circumstances seem hopeless. Thank you, God. May it be so.