A book I was recently reading described a Hindu hymn which was a prayer to the god Ram. It began by praying that the Lord Ram would come and visit the singer. It went on to repeat this prayer citing different reasons why he should come, promising different sacrifices if he would come, finally in the end making excuses why he couldn’t come, yet at the end of each verse repeating the phrase “he did not come”.
As humans we share much with all men, whether they be Hindu, Muslim, agnostic, or Mormons. For one we could list Pizza, which seems to be a completely universal food, perhaps simply because each culture can put whatever toppings they like on it. We have been called out of the world but we are to a great degree still in it. Some of us are lazy, some of them are lazy, some energetic, some depressed, some optimistic, some thoughtful, some quick, some poor, some rich, some conservative, some liberal, some large, some small. We get ourselves caught at times in terrible sins which ruin our lives and drag us down, from which it seems there is no way out. There are those of us who spend our entire lives looking out only for number one. We are greedy, covetous, riotous, rebellious, lustful, and hurtful. In every way that people differ from one another, we differ from one another. We are so quick to divide people on the surface, not only by lines of race or politics, but also by academic standing, monetary status, choice of clothes, choice of music, place of birth, etc. All of these things are of course superficial, only surface differences, in reality they mean nothing. It is this superficial character which also allows so many to see all religions as only one. In almost every area Christianity parallels other religions. Even the resurrection is not unique to the Bible. There are many myths in the world about gods who die and come back to life. Yet all this is superficial. Look deeper and you find a vast canyon of difference. One of these is as simple as one word: Hope.
The Christian defines the word in a way that is fundamentally different from anything that is known to the world or its religions. Outside of Christianity the word hope is one of those words in the English language that simply does not have a synonym. The thesaurus gives: expect desire, dream, wish, plan, aspire, and anticipate. To expect or anticipate indicates a reasoned probability based on concrete evidence for a future event. To desire, dream, or wish in no way indicates whether the thing is likely to come to pass or not. They leave the question of probability completely out of the equation. Aspire or plan ignores probability and replaces it with man’s will and power to bring an event to pass. The word “hope” however includes a low probability (on rare occasions perhaps a moderate or high probability although never a full one) and waits for the said event despite this acknowledgement. Hope acknowledges probable failure yet continues straight ahead. That is this is what it means to those who don’t have Christ. To us however, the word means something entirely different, and it has synonyms: certainly, truth, success, knowledge. To the Christian hope indicates that which will happen, not that which might happen. This has an immediate impact on every moment of our lives. I man may fight against alcoholism for thirty years trying desperately to quit and he may continue to struggle hoping that he may yet find a way to quit. If he is not a Christian with each passing year that hope becomes a little smaller dwindling to nothing in the end and dyeing out. If he is a Christian the hope never changes because it is not a possibility but a certainly that someday he will win the fight, because the very power of God the same which raised Christ from the dead lives in him and fights with him to the end that God has in store and that power cannot fail. A man may give up that hope, he may cast it away but while it remains with him it never weakens. A mother might hope that she can find the strength to be a good caring and loving mother, but a Christian mother knows that every ounce of compassion, love, and understanding which she may need will be supplied to her through the living God. She hopes knowing so shall it be, even as God has promised through His Son Jesus, the Christ. Whatever difficulty lies before us, whatever sorrow, whatever sin, whatever temptation, we keep on fighting not because we wish to win, not because we think we might win, but because we know that we can win against it, by the Grace of God, through the love of Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.
To some the song of Ram is the song of Hope. Ram is coming, Ram will come, Ram might come, perhaps Ram will come, please Ram come, Ram did not come, trailing off to a mere whisper of the indistinct cry of loss. But for those of us who” have seen the end which the Lord intends”, who know the certainty of victory, there is no trailing off but only the certainty of the finality of the triumph. The certainty of what we wait for.