If It is Not Good, It is Not the End: Reframing Hope.

By default, I'm not the most optimistic person. Just putting that out there, for context.

And while I wasn't completely Eeyore...well, I empathized. To clarify, I was never a goth. But I probably could've made one miserable. (Can't decide, as I'm reading over that, if that's strange attempt at a flex...) Anyway.

Point is, growing up, I hated listening to people talk about hope.

They would usually smile and squeeze their hands together and talk like Glinda (OG wizard of Oz Glinda), or bellow like a NFL coach. Nothing in-between. Sort of like a freaky good-cop bad-cop routine, but with the same essential message:

"It's not as bad as you think it is."

And if you're like me, with an Eeyore streak of your own, you might've thought to yourself mid inspirational talk,

"Honestly...sometimes it is."

And if we're really honest, with hindsight vision, sometimes what's going on is even worse than we realized.

Lol. Welcome to Lantova.

But that's the irony of the gospel message we often overlook. While it is genuinely "good news," that God came back, in the flesh to save humanity from itself (John 1:14; Luke 19:10), this good news starts out with a rough reality check:

"For the wages of sin is death..."

(Romans 6:23, KJV)

Or to use the Average Gen-Z Unfiltered Translation (AGZUT),

"Y'all be dying, and ya don't know it."

Our typical response to this idea? Stanley mode activated.

Hope does not ignore chaos.

The gospel message was never a dismissal of the messiness of life–– the chaos, pain, dysfunction, disappointment, and loss. If anything, it's actually the only story that honors that reality and pivots us toward a better end.

You can't stop a TV show mid series and expect all those loose threads and unanswered questions to fall into place. It won't make sense, until you get to the end.

And if Yahweh has promised us a good ending, what do we do when we’re surrounded by unanswered questions, unhealed wounds, and messed-up situations?

We can choose to lose hope. Roll belly up. Adopt an Eeyore worldview, and tell ourselves that story.

Or we can pause.

And we can remember: If God told us the truth...

IF IT IS NOT GOOD, IT IS NOT THE END.