Hope Felt Like Borrowing

Somebody offered you something on Sunday and you said no before they had finished the sentence.

It was not much. A woman you know slightly said she had a good feeling about your situation, and she meant it warmly, and she was not being flippant.

And your whole body went, no thank you.

You were perfectly pleasant about it. You said something light and moved the conversation on and she never knew a thing. But inside, the reaction was fast and it was total, and it surprised you enough that you have been thinking about it since.

Because you know what it was. It was the same reaction you would have if somebody offered you a loan.

That is exactly what hope has come to feel like. Something you take on. Something that has to be serviced, month after month, out of an account that is not full. And if it goes wrong you are not just back where you started, you are down by whatever you put in.

So you decline. Politely. Every time.

Before we go anywhere, hear me.

I am not telling you off.

This is not cynicism. You are not a cynical woman and anybody who called you one would be wrong. You are somebody who has done the arithmetic on what hoping has cost you before, and you got an answer, and you have been living by it.

I am saying I saw you decline. That is all.

What cannot be repossessed

Here is Paul at the end of a list, and I want you to notice that the list is exhaustive on purpose.

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 8:38-39

Look at how he builds it. He goes through the pairs, the big ones, the far apart ones. Death and life. Present and future. Height and depth.

And then he does something that shows he knows exactly what he is doing. He adds nor any other creature, which is a catch all clause, put in by a man who wanted to close every remaining gap in the sentence before somebody found one.

That is a legal move. He is not being poetic. He is sealing a document.

So here it is, said directly to you, in whatever street or room you are in.

You are inside something that cannot be repossessed. Not one day, not once your situation clears, not depending on whether the thing you have stopped hoping for arrives. Right now, exactly as you are, you are held in a love that Paul deliberately fenced against every category he could name. That is not my encouragement. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real woman in a real week.

Now, is hope a debt?

I want to answer that honestly because a false answer would insult you.

The kind of hope that keeps being offered at the door is a debt. Hope fixed on an outcome does have to be serviced, and it does cost, and if the outcome does not arrive you really are down by what you put in. Your arithmetic was correct. Nobody has ever told you that before and you should hear it once: your arithmetic was correct.

What Paul is describing is not that.

Things to come is in his list. He has put the future in there deliberately, on the side of the things that cannot separate you. Which means the thing you are afraid to hope for is already named in that sentence, and it is named as something that has no power to take away what you actually stand in.

And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You have something on your books that cannot be called in, and no outcome anywhere in the future is a creditor over it. The word says nothing in things to come shall be able, which is a phrase about capacity rather than about likelihood, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real chest that has learned to say no thank you.

You can take a hope that is not a loan. There is a kind that is not lent. Nobody offered you that one and it is not your fault that you assumed there was only the one kind.