By The Howitzer

Things are going to get better, aren’t they? My finances are going to stabilize, right? My job is going to become more satisfying? My kids are going to stay out of trouble and reach their potential? My wife is going continue to love me, right? The politicians are finally going to get it right and soon we will all experience world peace? A chicken in every pot and every child will live out the American Dream even if they were born in the slums of Mumbai? Hunger will go away, AIDS and cancer will be eradicated, exploitation of the poor will dissipate and everyone will have at least one friend that they can depend on? Paradise will be found won’t it?

It’s funny the things that we hope for. We are looking for life to get better. Even if things are going pretty well, we look to the future to be brighter than it is today. What is it about the human heart that it always feels a twinge of discontentment that “things are not like they could or should be”? The main reason we feel that is that things are not like they could or should be! We were never intended to live life in a fallen sin-filled world. The good that we experience in this world is but a dim foreshadowing of what is to come. At least that is the hope of the Christ-follower. If not we are all in trouble.

A couple of days ago, I ran into a passage in First Peter that caught my eye. In Chapter one he writes, ^13 Therefore, prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled; set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed.

The thing that sticks out to me if that Peter exhorts us to place our hope COMPLETELY on the grace to be revealed. Not PARTIALLY but FULLY. When we are HOPING for things to get better we are looking for GRACE. We spend most of our time hoping for things to get better here when we should be hoping for future grace to be revealed. The reality of our experience is that we want to experience now a grace that will make everything all right. Whether that grace is from God or from others we want the favor of someone or something to shine on us. The reality is that may or may not happen in this world.

Last night, I was involved (for the first time) in a service project called Laundry Love. Once a month a group of folks from the Cobblestone Project go to a local laundry mat in my city and assists the people there with their laundry. When we got there the place was packed. Every washer was spoken for and the organizers were scrambling to get everybody signed up and give him or her their wash and dry tickets. Each participant was given three wash tickets and three dry tickets. I got to play the roll of quarter-man. I roamed around the laundry and put quarters into people’s machines. I had forgotten how expensive it is to wash your clothes in a laundry mat (three to five dollars for a wash and one to two dollars for a dry).

Now, I suspect that most of the participants in the laundry project had some money if we ran out of quarters but some may have come dependent on the hope of getting their laundry done for free. Not knowing what would happen created some tension I am sure for the participants. I know I felt the tension of what happens when the quarters run out and somebody has a load partially dry. Hoping fully to experience grace given would be like coming to Laundry Love project with no quarters or detergent at all. Being fully dependant on the quarter-man and soap boy (we had a couple of those as well) to supply your laundry needs. Hoping that neither runs out of resources.

I think that is a great illustration of how we should place our hope. Our hope is not in the change in our pocket (ie. the grace of this present world) but ultimately we are to be dependent on the grace that will be revealed when Jesus comes again and sets up his kingdom. Things are not going to get better here. We will struggle until creation is made right again at His second coming. We will experience glimpses of His grace but will also experience much of the fallenness of this world. I don’t know about you but I am ready for things to be set right.

When He comes I wonder if He will have the quarters and soap? I hope so because my heart need a good cleaning.