One Leaf

When I was first inspired to write this blog I had a particular idea of what it would look like. I posed the question to many of you and began forming the paragraphs in my head.
Here was my question:
What is the greatest emotion/feeling and why?

My original inspiration has since been replaced. The emotion I was going to propose as the greatest feeling, now has a different face. Consider these words a progression. From joy to peace to love to pain to relief. And from relief to something greater. Something more important. More life-changing and exciting. A feeling that is staggering. And yours for the taking.

So our journey begins. To arrive at our final destination we will wind through your cities of joy, towns of peace, rivers of love, fields of gratitude, forests of pain, and beaches of relief. A road speckled with tears and grins, nods and laughter.

The cities of joy. People smiling in all and despite all circumstances. A feeling dependent not “on happenings” as mere happiness tends to be, but “on Christ.” Because joy is a choice, a trust in something greater than disappointment. Something that magnifies delight. A dancing choice based on a greater constant.

The towns of peace. “Joy at rest.” The knowing dips of their heads, an inner strength evident as they look past the mud in their streets, pointing out the infinite stars above. Instead of saying “I see that it’s good for me, so God must have sent it” their peace says,“God sent it, so it must be good for me.”

The rivers of love. Never lacking of people washing in their waters. The washing away of fear, hurt, mistakes. The exuberant waters accepting all who enter. The gentle current and patient trickles speaking kindly of its source. Splashes in the rivers are never short; the unceasing replenishment is an embracing haven.

The fields of gratitude. Seeds of humility and appreciation grown into stalks of optimism, grains of promise and sustenance, enriching those who hunger.

The forests of pain. Splintered wood and broken twigs. The place where the lost can be found. “In the same way pleasure draws us, pain pushes us.” Beneath the shade of the trees, suffering drives us to the other side.

Where we find beaches of relief. We bask in the alleviation of stress, worry, pain, and busyness. The sun dries the tears. We are known and remembered. And this, my friends, is where I thought the greatest feeling could be found. Relief. The lump behind your ear is not cancerous. You finding the social security card that had been absent from it’s usual spot. (Speaking from experience.) The letter in the mail that says- Congratulations, you passed your last CPA exam. A long hard workout and you finish the last rep, couch and chocolate milk in sight. Relief- the feeling that frees your body, mind, or soul from despair, pressure, and anxiety. The feeling of delivery when you thought you couldn’t go one more day, one more rep, one more failure. Deliverance, relief, is part of God’s design in this broken world. Convinced yet?

But there’s more! So much more! Ted Dekker writes, “What elevates our emotions, and what dashes them to the ground? What makes us jump for joy, and what sends us into a pit of deep discouragement? The answers are surprisingly simple: Hope. And hopelessness.” This is so true. Why do we have joy, peace, love, gratitude, relief? We have hope for reconciliation, hope for deliverance, hope that we can have relationship, future. Hope that we are known, recognized, and cared for by something, no, Someone far greater than ourselves.

When Noah was aching for the ark to hit land, a dove brought him an olive leaf. A universal sign of hope. As Max Lucado describes it, “Noah went up the ladder with questions, but came down with confidence.” I don’t know about you guys, but hope feels pretty good to me. In a world full of doubt, skepticism, relevance, and brokenness, even a blink of confidence is significant. And we’re talking about more than a blink.

People have hope for good weather. Hope for promotions, family, impact. But too easily forgotten is the ultimate hope that gives purpose and meaning to anything and everything else. Hope to last an eternity. Hope for eternity. Heaven. A hope for heaven that has gotten lost in the ‘pleasures’ of this world. A hope I have too often replaced with trivial joys and anxieties of this life.

Ted Dekker’s book ‘The Slumber of Christianity’ challenged me in unexpected ways. Ways I don’t have space to flesh out in this post. (Keep an eye out in the future!) But it has reinforced and reminded me why Christians need to wake up to this great feeling, a significance to me and hopefully to you. Love and peace and joy are all great feelings. But they are worth nothing if they aren’t riding on the coattails of eternity’s hope. The present and this world are fleeting. But hope for heaven is not diminished by tomorrow.

Ted Dekker expounds on this staggering promise using an image of a large and mysterious machine. Found in an isolated barn by settlers who don’t know how to turn it on, they develop ways of using different parts of the contraption to improve their settlement. But then one day one of them finds a small pearl that appears to fit into part of the machine they hadn’t been able to make functional yet. Placing the small pearl in that compartment turns the machine on and the people are astounded by the machine rousing and operating as it was intended to.

Dekker likens this machine to our lives here on earth: “No matter how man will find pleasure within its gears and contrive usefulness from its gadgets, the machine of life is destined to lie in darkness unless fueled by the pearl of great hope. But powered by that fuel, the great machine will awaken with a thunder and fill the heart with an inexhaustible awe. Happy is the man who finds this pearl of great price.”

Hope and hopelessness. Life to its fullest, or deadened despair.

Romans 5 says, “We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us.”

Hope does not disappoint! All the other emotions can disappoint us- these emotions as we portray or exude them in our flawed human ways. Love, joy, peace, gratitude, relief. They aren’t always like we want or expect. But hope. Hope does not disappoint. Hope’s authentication is dependent on the truthfulness of it’s object. Hope’s object- heaven and eternity with the Lord- is a truth you can have 100% confidence in.

Paul says in Colossians- “We have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all God’s people, the faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel that has come to you.”

It excites me to write this, not because I’m revealing a hidden truth to you. But because we already share in this hope together. If hope is the greatest feeling we can have, and faith and love spring from it, we can share the hope through loving others and sharing our faith. A challenge I am far from succeeding in and am wrestling with to discover what exactly that looks like in my life. But maybe just living like I have hope and confidence for eternity would be a great start.

Maybe living like we have hope will be contagious. And who wouldn’t want to feel that hope? True, eternal hope. A hope that doesn’t disappoint.