A Great Life

What constitutes a great life? This question has been asked by humankind since the very beginning. Ancient Greek philosophers asked the question and sought to work out the answer. These wise men of old decided a great life is built upon such things as pleasure and freedom from pain, freedom from poverty, education and leading an “examined life,” freedom from fear, the contemplation of God, honorable behavior (virtue), doing things in the right proportion, fulfilling your political and social obligations, friendship and security. Over the years others have tried to enlighten us about what makes a life great. Politicians have offered their two cents worth; poets, artists and musicians have offered up their ideas, and of course prophets and priests have chimed in as well.

The question is an important one. Having been around a few deathbeds in my days as a pastor, I am convinced that whether we admit it or not, one of the greatest fears many of us have, is that despite all our effort and striving, we will discover at the very end that we have wasted our life. No one wants to squander their life; life is too precious. And that begs the question, “How then, shall we live?”

The easy answer for us as Christians, of course, would be to simply say, “Look in the Bible, for there you will see how to live.” But honestly, it’s not that simple because of the unfortunate tendency we have of finding exactly what we’re looking for in the Bible. We read things into it that were never intended. Apartheid in South Africa was supported by the Dutch Boers because their theologians found exactly what they were looking for in the Bible. The same goes for slavery in America – we excused it by calling it “Ham’s curse” and thus made it "biblical." For centuries Jewish people were persecuted, oppressed and even murdered, on the pretext of truth sought and found in the Bible – New Testament texts that were interpreted to blame the Jews for the crucifixion of Jesus. Everyone finds in the Bible exactly what he/she seeks.

So what can we do? What makes up a great life? I am still working on a more complete answer, but my short answer to the question would be that a great life consists of the accumulation of grace-filled days, one day at a time. It has to do with living our lives in what author Spencer Johnson in his delightful parable calls the “precious present.” We can’t do much about our yesterdays, and worry over tomorrow is a waste of time. Today is what matters. The recovering alcoholic knows this – he or she makes a daily commitment to be sober for the day ahead – one day at a time. The same is true for all of us. The new person we want to be – the life we want to live, the things we want to start doing and the things we want to stop doing can only be accomplished today, and they only be accomplished by God’s grace.

I believe that’s what Joshua meant when he said, “Choose THIS DAY whom you will serve…” in Joshua 24:15. Living a great life is a daily choice, and since we are not God it definitely involves serving someone or something. Joshua says it is literally the choice between life and death.

As we move into the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, keep this in mind. Each morning as your feet hit the floor commit your life anew to Christ and ask Him to help you be grace-filled that day and to be a grace-bearer to others. Then, no matter what happens, or where you find yourself, you will be living a great life.

Hope

There’s a great line in the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” where Clarence the angel is summoned to help a troubled human. “Is he sick?” Clarence asks. “No, it’s worse than being sick,” the head angel replies, “he’s discouraged.” My guess is some of you reading this today are discouraged so I thought I would write about the antidote to discouragement, which is hope.

What is hope? Where does it come from? How do you get it? Turns out the word has quite a storied history. In Greek mythology, hope was personified as Elpis, the spirit (daimona) of hope. She along with the other daimones were trapped in a jar by Zeus and entrusted to the care of Pandora, the first woman. When Pandora opened the jar all of the spirits escaped except for Elpis. Without hope to accompany all their troubles, humanity was soon filled with despair. It was a great relief when Pandora returned to her jar and let out hope as well. Elpis was usually depicted as a young woman carrying flowers in her arms. Her opposite was Moros, spirit of hopelessness and doom (where we get our English word, “morose”).

The nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had a more cynical take on this Greek legend, complaining that Zeus “did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he [Zeus] gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment.”

Like the word we’ve been studying so much these “Forty Days,” “love,” the term “hope” has been cheapened by the ways we use it so loosely. We say things like, “I hope it doesn’t rain today,” or “I hope my car starts this morning,” or “I hope the Falcons win on Sunday.” “I hope. I hope. I hope.”

The dictionary defines hope several ways, the most common of which is that hope is “the feeling that something good will happen.” The act of hoping is to, “wish for something with the desire that the wish will be fulfilled.” The words “feeling” and “wish” are indefinite and vague words, but this definition of “hope” exemplifies the understanding most people have of hope as “wishful thinking.”

Thankfully, the Bible puts “hope” in a totally different light. Far from being something we “wish for,” biblical hope is a “confident expectation of something good in the future.” Hope, then, is not simply an emotion, attitude, or a feeling. It is a confidence that literally defines us. Biblical hope not only desires something good for the future; it expects it to happen. And it not only expects it to happen; it is confident that it will happen. There is a moral certainty that the good we expect and desire will occur. And that moral certainty leads us to action and, in time, to faith.

Secular hope is often passive in the sense of being a wish; often against rational belief that the thing wished for will actually occur. Biblical hope, on the other hand, is active as a plan or idea, and is usually accompanied by persistent, personal action to execute the plan or prove the idea. Consider a prisoner of war who never gives up hope for escape and, against the odds, plans and accomplishes that very thing. By contrast, consider another prisoner who simply wishes for freedom, but without any genuine hope it will ever occur. Planning and action are useless. In time this prisoner will eventually give up all hope of freedom (if they, in fact, had “hope” to begin with).

The New Testament declares “hope” to be an absolute, a guarantee without a doubt meaning, “to expect or anticipate with pleasure.” For instance in Romans 5:2 Paul writes, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” We rejoice in the glory of God, not with uncertainty but with joyful anticipation — guaranteed. Or consider Colossians 1:5: “For the hope that is stored up for you in heaven and that you have already heard about in the word of truth the gospel.” The Hope of Heaven is not a maybe — but an absolute and definite guarantee by the Word of the Truth of the Gospel.

Now that we’ve defined hope, where does it come from? By now you’ve probably figured out that hope like this can only come from God. God is the source and the object of our hope. Without God we have no hope and life is meaningless, a “chasing after the wind” to use the immortal words of Solomon.

How do you get this hope? Perhaps that is not quite as clear. My personal belief is that the answer about how to appropriate the hope God makes available to us is simply this: Focus your thoughts on God, and not on your problems. As has been pointed out several times in our current series, we have a tendency to turn into that which we focus on the most. If we stare at our problems, our disappointments, and our defeats all the time, they will quickly overwhelm us. If, on the other hand, we focus on God, our mountains will soon turn into molehills. Don’t focus on your need. Don’t focus on your lack. Don’t focus on your problem. Focus on God. Where does your hope come from? Hope comes from Him. Be encouraged today. Let hope be reborn in your heart; hope has a name: Jesus Christ. Ask Him to come into your life anew today (or for the first time!) and hope will be born in you!