Hope in the Midst of Despair

I’m sitting at Panera Bread right now, doing some tweaking on the wedding ceremony I’ll be performing tomorrow. It’s my second wedding to perform in a week. On the Friday evening of Mission: Possible, N and I had the privilege of performing a ceremony in Flint. It was a holy moment for us, celebrating and blessing the marriage of a couple we’ve watched grow together from their first date till now. Tomorrow I have the arduous task of performing my sister’s wedding. What an incredible gift and honor to participate in my baby sister’s special day! (Of course, I’m pretty sure that there is no humanly possible way I’ll make it through without some serious waterworks. The trifecta of watching N, then MJ, then my sister gracefully glide down the aisle will be too much to humanly bear!)

All of this makes me reflect on a conversation that I had during Mission: Possible this year. I was talking with someone about the blessing of having so many young families at Lake Orion. They responded by saying something like, “I’ve got to hand it to all of you. I’m not sure how you do it.” “How we do what?” “How you keep having kids in today’s world. It’s a pretty scary thing to think about raising kids today.”

On the one hand, there is something to that statement. The world is changing. Much of the confidence that people have felt in the past has been shaken. Assurance has been traded for doubt. Confidence and security swapped for anxiety and doubt. On the other hand, though, we are a gospelled people! Our lives are shaped by the confidence we have that, in spite of what our eyes might see, God is up to something incredible in the world. God continues to bring about new life, new hope, new creation. We believe that God is redeeming and reconciling all things in Christ Jesus (Col 1:20).

This faith, this belief that God is doing a new thing even in the midst of troubling and trying times, isn’t a new challenge. We are not the first people to wrestle with doubt. Throughout scripture we see God’s people struggling in places that bring them to the brink of paralyzing despair. It was into one of those seasons that Jeremiah wrote to a community of exiles:

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare (Jer 29:5-7).

Building houses, planting gardens, getting married, and having children…all are a powerful, prophetic witness to a despairing world that we are a people of hope. We believe and trust that God is up to something in this world, and so we refuse to give in to despair. We dare to live life to the full, not simply for ourselves but for the welfare of our city and for the sake of the world!