Hope and Hopelessness
Parenting is a strange job. Parenting partially-raised and often-broken kids is even stranger. I think we are doing the right thing by treating them, and having them treat us, like we are their real parents. But sometimes I feel like we’re fooling ourselves. I admit to them quite readily that I am not their real father – I’m not trying to trick them – but they need to know the unconditional love that only a father and mother can possibly give.
I’m starting to think that I have to hold both hope and hopelessness in my heart simultaneously. It sounds like doublethink, but it’s not. I must have hope for them, that much is obvious. I must always hold onto the hope that they will be healed, that they will love Jesus and know him better than I do, that they will accept our love as fully as little Isaac does. If I don’t have that hope, I have nothing.
But at the same time, there is a good chance that, for some of these kids, that may never happen. When I am faced with that realization because of something one of them says or does, my hope is shattered and I feel, once again, like I’ve been fooling myself. Sometimes, in order to just get through the day, I have to accept the fact that all my work and all my love may have no effect in the end. I am just the nurse, not the doctor, and if they choose not to follow the doctor’s orders there is little I can do about it.
It’s a weird thing. I have to love with everything that I am and more, but I have to expect absolutely nothing in return. If I am loving them for the results, I will get burnt out really quickly. I’ve talked about something like this before. I have to get my results directly from Jesus, because I may never see results in this life.
I have to have hope because… well because without hope there is nothing, and as long as there is any kind of hope I have to cling to it. But sometimes I think I have to accept the hopelessness too, if only to get me through the day. Is this what it’s like for the persecuted? Those who are tortured, imprisoned, or executed for Jesus have no hope and often no joy in this world or this life, but they do what they do anyway. They know that the things they do while they are in jail or beaten may have absolutely no effect. Hope drives them on. Does hopelessness allow them to accept it when it doesn’t happen?
Or is it just a much bigger kind of hope than I have yet experienced?
God bless you as He teaches you. In some respects what you are experiencing is not much different than being the “real” parents of teenagers. I believer that eachof us must remember that it is not about us nor about the children, but about God. Is what you do done for the Glory of Him who saved you or is it to shine light on you? Are you reflecting the light of the Son as the moon reflects the light of the Sun? Hang in there, you will see results someday, here or There.
The real hope is the hope of glory and spending eternity with God. That is what keeps the persecuted going. What we do here is simply an investment for our eternal hope. As long as we are here, it is like the real investments such as in the stock market – ups and downs. But we can only forge ahead knowing that as we do all we can for the Kingdom, our greatest and surest hope is eternity spent with God. Keep on investing in that future and you will then see that it has been worth it all.
Jean is right, what you are experiencing is not much different than being parents of teenagers. After five of them and many heartaches, we just keep investing in their lives and “hope” that they remember what we have taught them. However, they are now adults and responsible for their own decisions – we can only continue to pray and invest as much as we can. We were reminded again, with that whole clan together at Christmas at your house, that God has truly blessed mom and me with the best of the best.
“Our [demonic] cause is never more in danger, than when a human, no longer desiring, but intending, to do our Enemy’s [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” -Screwtape, from C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters.
-Matt
Good one Matt. yes guys, yes.
They will grow up knowing they were considered differently than Isaac, and yet love is available.