Hope, even with smokey skies
The sky has not fallen as Henny Penny feared it would. However, our region experienced a considerable amount of smoke from Canadian wildfires at the start of the week of June 5th. Our usually blue skies became not just dangerous but ominous. Some described the oddly pink and eerie-looking sun coupled with the smokey fog as something similar to Armageddon.
A question arises. Is this recent natural disaster another sign that the end times are coming?
The answer depends on who you ask. I don’t hear apocalyptic conversation from anyone under 40. That’s not to say the chatter is happening. I just have not experienced it.
Another age group with far more trips around what has been the yellowy orange sun speaks about this more and more. An increasing number of baby boomers share with me that they think the end is near.
I’ve never conducted an unofficial poll or survey on this, yet I have come to the place in my 15-year career where what was quieter now gains more air space (no pun). More and more people are saying the world will soon (soonish?) come to an end.
Are they right? I don’t know.
What I do know in the face of woes and sorrow is that there is hope.
Next week’s column will continue with how this week’s column started. I’ll speak of the apocalypse as presented scripturally. I will also discuss the dominion God gave humankind over the earth and bring out a passion of mine, which is Christian stewardship of the planet.
Until then, this week’s column continues with the subject of hope during challenging times.
Hope to the Christian is far from a wish. For example, it’s unlikely a Christian would say, “I wish things would get better.”
Christian hope is a confident expectation. This confident expectation is more than a desire for something good to happen in the future. Christians can be secure in this hope because even when our vision is cloudy because of smoke or other sad, bad, or heartbreaking news, we have a consistent, ever-present God who consistently provides and prevails.
Our hope is not in ourselves. Our hope is in our God, and our God comes through.
Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes (1577–1635) knew of this hope. He also knew of the conflict even Christians experience between wishing and hoping when he wrote The Soul’s Conflict with Itself, a 175-page book on a single verse, Psalm 42:5. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation (ESV).”
Even without neighboring wildfires, Sibbes knew hope could dim, darken or be clouded over for a time. I believe this is why he wrote that he didn’t praise God continuously. He wrote that he praised God again.
Perhaps he stopped praising God for a time (or could have stopped praising God for a time). Maybe he stopped his praise for a moment. With hopelessness familiar to each of us, he may have stopped his praise for much, much longer than a moment.
But the Puritan always came back. He always praised God again—and again.
Sibbes was known as “the sweet dropper” because confidence and joy dropped into his sermons. Even when situations were dark or dour, the person at the pulpit didn’t pull a Henny Penny. Instead, he secured hope not in himself or the situation at hand but in God.
During bleak or burdensome times, we can do what the sweet dropper did: we can praise God again. Our souls do not need to be cast down—or stay cast down.
Skies may darken again. Smoke from Canada or elsewhere may arrive at any time. Other news can also reach us and make end times feel even closer.
If so, maybe we can coauthor a 175-page book on Psalm 47:1. That verse reads, “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble.”
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