Is anyone else tired of waiting?
For instance, I just got finished waiting for spring. Since I’m a west coaster, my physical calendar expects green leaves and flowers to happen earlier than they do in MInnesota. For myself (and my daughter), the month between March 15 and April 20 was quite possibly the longest month of the year. Not only were we full into social distancing mode, but the signs of spring just weren’t coming. In spite of the fact that the birds were back, and the snows were melting soon after they fell, a normal spring involved warmth, sunshine, and plant growth, preferably in rapid succession. We knew that spring had to come; it just hadn’t yet. Now it’s here, and I’m thick in the middle of laying out my garden.
Waiting for spring as a transplant is a lot like waiting for Christmas as a kid. Everyone says that it is coming. Your experience says that it has always come before. But the wait just seems so long that doubt begins to creep in. I, myself, have heard kids say, “What if Christmas doesn’t come this year?” or “It feels like Christmas is never going to come.” And yet it does. Always.
As adults, we tend to smile at these feelings. We’ve got enough life experience stored up to know that feelings don’t alter the natural course of events. “Summer and winter, springtime and harvest shall never cease” (Genesis 8:22). But the waiting periods of adult life aren’t so regular: finding that job, kicking that cancer, waiting out a political election, seeing our children out of some danger, or watching our spouses deploy. The end result of these waiting experiences isn’t so predictable. And so we as adults get to experience that same feeling of “I just can’t see the end of this” or “I don’t see how this is ever going to get better.” It’s easy to lose hope.
As a Navy wife for seven years, I struggled through a lot of waiting. In the middle of a deployment, it’s easy to forget what life with one’s spouse is like. The time in between gets monotonous; it feels heavy and unreal. One loses sight of the end and begins to think, “Even when they do come back, that can’t possibly make this better. This is just too hard.”
On the surface, that sounds a lot like, “Christmas is never going to get here,” but there’s a difference. Christmas always comes, and while waiting for Christmas or for spring doesn’t leave any lasting scars. But in adult experiences, waiting can tarnish hope. And when hope gets tarnished, our expectations change. Our happiness gets tinged with cynicism or fear or despair. We might become afraid to spend money, like people who lived through the Great Depression. We might go through life expecting to be physically or emotionally assaulted, as many combat veterans or victims of abuse can testify. Or we might become irrationally afraid that our spouse will depart for good, as I was for years after Seth got out of the Navy. We aren’t able to enjoy what we’ve received. Our capacity for hope has been depleted by overuse. It’s worn out. It’s broken.
I think a lot of people are experiencing this now because of the CoronaVirus, but it’s hardly new to human experience. It’s easy to be overwhelmed when your spirit has to do a lot of heavy lifting all at once. We have a lot of fears to balance right now. Will someone we love get sick? Will there be medical treatment for my problem? Will the economy recover in time to keep my business from going bankrupt? Will I be able to feed my family and pay my rent this week? Will we still have religious freedom when this is all over? Are my kids getting the education they need? That’s a lot to lift, and it’s no wonder than people are getting tired of it.
The Holy Spirit has been pushing me toward the book of 1 Peter during this crisis. Peter was writing to a bunch of Christians in an uncertain place. They were being persecuted, but in a way that still allowed some of normal life to go on. Historical sources tell us that when Christians weren’t being fed to the lions, they were still facing things like being turned out by their masters, losing their jobs or their homes (if they were renting), being turned away from certain services, and being the last to receive aid in times of crisis. This slow-burn persecution still happens today, and it creates a lot of uncertainty. Maintaining a strong front in the face of an immediate enemy is one thing, but how do you resist unspecified enemies that could come at any moment or slow deprivation stretched out over a long period of time?
Suffering, uncertainty, and helplessness tend to assault our sense of self-worth. When we feel like we can’t do anything about a situation, we begin to question how effective we are in the world in general. Suffering induces shame, whether we deserve shame or not. Isolation leads us to question ourselves, our friends,and our government. Exile is hard. Man is born to trouble, just like sparks have to fly upward.
In the midst of this, Peter reminds his beloved friends to take an eternal perspective on their situation. Not all suffering is connected to shame, and their self worth does not lie in their social efficacy. They are not made of perishable things but imperishable. And these struggles have come so that the imperishable cord that runs through their lives, the faith in Jesus Christ that God has sown into each one of them, can be refined, strengthened, and matured. They were chosen before the creation of the world, they have been purified by faith and obedience, they are united with Christ Jesus in their suffering, and they will be shielded by God until they receive the inheritance that is in heaven.
Three things struck me about this letter as I read it
- How many times Peter refers to the divine seed of the people he is writing to. He speaks of their salvation as a concrete fact, one that should be built around and planned on. The immortality of his readers, by the grace of God, is the central fact of this letter, and it shapes everything else.
- That immortality makes them different from the people around them. They are a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession that [they] may declare the praises of him who called [them] out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (2:9)
- That difference is manifested in hope that other people don’t understand. “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect” (3:15). Peter is assuming that their hope will be obvious. People are going to see it and say, “How can you have hope like that right now?” And they’ll have to explain.
Hope is a strange thing. It is an enjoyment of a possibility that isn’t proven yet. Hope can only really exist in uncertainty, but it literally breeds miracles. Hope for a better life inspires immigrants to leave family, property, and community and move to another country to start all over again. People who continue to hope in the face of impossible circumstances have regained nations. Hope allows people to resist tyrants and die knowing that they will leave a better world behind them. Hope of the Resurrection changed the world. Great things happen when people can hope for great things.
Faith is the certainty of what you hope for. Peter and his readers were hoping for their own holiness (purification) and the glory of God. And they were so certain of it that they were able to do great things like love when they had nothing, submit to unfair rulers, and suffer cheerfully in full view of an incredulous world.
So in this time of uncertainty, what are you hoping for?
That’s a big question, isn’t it? There are a lot of great struggles being waged right now. Human wisdom and scientific innovation are wrestling with death. The human spirit is wrestling with isolation, fear, frustration, and a general feeling of invalidity. The economy is wrestling with government restrictions, supply chain disruptions, and consumer panic. Justice and freedom are wrestling with the concentration of emergency powers. That’s a lot of uncertainty. It’s a breeding ground for despair, but it’s also the perfect soil for hope. So what are we hoping for?
If we are hoping for a vaccine or a quick and effective treatment for the CoronaVirus, we may or may not be disappointed. If we are hoping for a new embracing of the Constitution as it was originally written, I think we’re barking up the wrong tree. If we are hoping that the economy will bounce back like a rubber band, and six months from now neither our children nor our bank accounts will remember this economic shutdown, I think we’re being unrealistic. Things will get better for most people; they always do. But they will never be the same. If our hope is that things will go back to the way they were, our hope will fail. We can hope for better, but if that hope depends on human function, whatever comes is going to be a mixed blessing.
However, if our hope is in God, then we already have one certainty. We know that difficulty, shame, and death are in the long run irrelevant. “Death, where is thy sting,” is just a fancy way of saying, “Is that all you’ve got?” Is watching your family struggle hard? Is postponing medical treatment risky? Are our fears legitimate? Yes because they are painful, and it is natural to recoil from pain. But at the same time, no. And this is something that we need to wrap our heads around: Suffering the way Jesus suffered is an honor. It is a direct connection to Jesus Christ, and it is the fastest way to get sin out of our lives. We may not be able to take up a literal cross, but we can take an eternal view on the frustrations and dangers that the current crisis is pushing on us. We can pour our frustrations out to God instead of hurling them on Facebook. And when people notice our silence, they will ask us why we can bear this with equanimity, and then we say, “Because death doesn’t scare me, and I know that God can make good things out of this.“
Why is this happening to us? “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though it has been refined by fire -- may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1:7)
Remember what Christ has done for you, rremember what He deserves from you, and also remember that the work of our hands is not the only way God makes his kingdom come. Sometimes it’s not what we do but how we handle what happens to us that brings God the most glory. Somehow, somewhere, the Kingdom of God is advancing because of the CoronaVirus. Can we be glad about that?
Can you see it in your own life? Maybe you’ve had to give up something that was coming between you and your Heavenly Father. If so, don’t look back. Maybe you’ve become more humble, more conscious of your neighbor, more sensitive to your spouse, more involved with your kids. If so, thank God and pursue that. Maybe this will make us all more patient and less selfish and more aware of how the economy works. Maybe our lives will become simpler so we can give more to those who need it. You know your life better than I do.
But in the midst of all this, remember to keep an eternal perspective. You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. Your inheritance in heaven is secured by Jesus Christ, and your soul is shielded by God himself for the duration of this trial, however long it may last. Your loved ones are in his hands, and his hands never let anyone fall. Let that be the anchor that you hang all your worries on. It can support them. And if your divine identity makes you feel less afraid for the future, don’t be afraid to say as much. People should have a reason for asking you why you have hope.
