Editorial September 19, 1994 Issue

Hope when there is no hope

William E. Moody

Each new day should bring with it new opportunities, an expectancy of good, a sense of discovery. It should bring joy. This very morning, however, there were people who started the day facing such desperate personal challenges and unhappiness that they couldn't seem to find any room at all for joy. Everything looked dark. They felt hopeless and could see no reason for hope.

Yet there's a New Testament message that rings down through the ages. It tells us of a different basis for hope, a different kind of hope. It's found in many passages—for example, in the Apostle Paul's letter to the early Christians in Rome. There's no question that Paul was a man who knew, as well as anyone could, what it means to face hard challenges, trials, even persecutions and bodily harm at the hands of one's enemies. Yet, out of his own experience in following Christ Jesus and the spiritual lessons he was learning, Paul could point to a hope so grounded in a recognition of divine power that it would stand through anything. This was a hope that could never possibly make one "ashamed," as the King James Version of the Bible declares (see Rom. 5:5).

In The New Testament in Modern English, J. B. Phillips translates the opening verses of chapter five of Paul's letter to the Romans this way: "Since then it is by faith that we are justified, let us grasp the fact that we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have confidently entered into this new relationship of grace, and here we take our stand, in happy certainty of the glorious things he has for us in the future."

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