Hello,
This is a common
word of “hope” that we hear when things are tough, a word that even sometimes
rolls off my lips when I am speaking with folks who are in the midst of
troubles and uncertainty. But when I say
these words I know that they only carry moderate and short term hope. I know this because I know that even the
strongest among us will find our strength waning as time progresses and as the
weight of the world doesn’t give in.
Actually, when you, like the cat in the poster, are finding yourself
hanging on by only a couple of claws, “hang in there” sounds much more like a
word of doom than hope.
“Hang in there!”
is not the Christian message.
Jesus Christ hung in there!
That is the Christian message.
The Christian message places no consolation in human
strength, rather the Christian message places every hope in the strength of
Christ. Above everything else that Jesus
Christ did when he hung in there on the cross was that he engaged every power
that would hope to wrest us away from God in a battle to the death….a death from
which only he arose.
The Bible tells us that as Jesus Christ hung on the cross,
passers-by and soldiers called upon him to come down from the cross and give up
the fight. But Christ did not. Jesus Christ hung in there. He hung in there until he could cry with a
final and triumphant shout, “It is finished!”
And with his final breath on the cross, so also breathed any voice that
would try and separate us from the love of God (Romans 8). Therein lies the hope that no one wielding human
strength and power could give. Jesus
Christ hung in there!
To me, weak human that I am, my hope in life, when things
are good and when things are tough, is not in how tightly I hold onto God, but
rather how tightly God is holding on to me.
That also, weak human that I am, is my hope on the day that I will be
facing death.
So, when I am with folks who are engaged in life, and seek
to give them a hope that will last far longer than the strength of their hands,
I say, “The Lord be with you.”….not a word of something that I hope will come true,
but as a word of something that is true, and I know that it is because “Jesus
Christ hung in there!”
Have a great week.
God’s grace and peace,(ggap)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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