Hope not Despair for the Battles of Life

Despair really is the abandonment of hope. In my book Braving the Storm I write about the German Underground Hospital built in Guernsey during World War 2. It was, in its day, the largest man-made underground structure in Europe, but today is a ruin only barely available to tourists who want to recall the Occupation. It is dark, smelly and eerie, with definite ghoulish factors to give goosebumps even to people who enjoy Halloween. It came into its own during the period after D-Day in June 1944, when these islands were cut off from the nearby continent and wounded soldiers from the front were shipped here for surgery and care. Almost immediately it was found to be useless as a place of renewal and healing. This was largely because of its dark underground design, and the total absence of natural light and warmth. They might just as well have written over the entrance "abandon hope all ye who enter here"!

Healing really does need hope, and the Bible says that "hope deferred makes the heart sick". The temptation to despair is something familiar to those of us who have fought long battles with chronic ill health. There surely must be similar pressure to despair in marital conflict, redundancy, or abuse. Once we dig our own bunker to hide in and determine to abandon hope we are in danger of the very cynicism and bitterness of soul that has destroyed people much more clever than we are. Despair poisons our emotions and robs us of peace. It trickles down into our spirits like the lime-stained seepage that mars the walls of the Underground Hospital. Ultimately it dethrones God in our hearts and is a form of what I also call in my books "sweet rebellion". This is usually present in the lives of people who have despaired of their situation, future or church, but are still running on fumes and acting like good, sweet Christians. Only a change of heart will heal. Only a change of language and attitude will bring the longed-for hope. The Bible calls that kind of thing repentance.

When the Jewish King David was going through a particularly wounding patch in his often troubled life, he refused to dig a bunker and despair. He wrote the immortal words of Psalm 42 - "Why are you so downcast, O my soul? why are you so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God." (v5) If you are reading this because you are tempted to dig a hole and despair I just want to urge you to think again. While there is a God in heaven there will be hope on Earth available to all who come humbly and desperate to Jesus Christ, our risen Lord. His Spirit and his words of hope can lift us up from a horrible pit even worse than the Nazis left in Guernsey.

Living Hope

Near our home in Guernsey is a concrete disaster. Not one of those monstrous office buildings erected in postmodern style all glass and girders, but an underground hospital left over from the Second World War. Built, or rather excavated, by the German occupying forces, it was in its day the largest underground concrete structure in Europe.  This subterranean hospital briefly received wounded troops from nearby France after D-Day until the Allied advance liberated Normandy and cut off these islands until the end of the war. I shall never forget my first visit to the eerie structure as a child because it caused me to shrink in sadness at the thought of anybody being taken down there already unwell or badly hurt.  It never really worked as a hospital because it robbed its patients of something that is so badly needed in recovery - sunshine. They might as well have inscribed over the entrance the famous words from Dante's vision of hell 'Abandon Hope all who Enter Here!'

Hope is vital to recovery - and I don't mean just the vague feeling that things might improve either.  Christian hope is based on the character of God and his great love for us. It works like sunshine on our life systems and gives us something to hold on to in the darkest times. This kind of hope is the confident assurance that God is good and that he has good things planned for those who love him.  But the abandonment of hope is the opposite of that and is called despair. Several young people visited Guernsey over this weekend who know what real despair is like.  They have known the degrading power of drug and alcohol addiction in their lives that has led in similar cases to prostitution, imprisonment and premature death.  Now following their rehabilitation through one of the UK's Teen Challenge centres they sing together in a remarkable girls' band called Living Hope and tour prisons, churches and schools telling their own stories of hope restored. We are so privileged to have received them in our home island and heard their amazing stories of God's hope - a living hope that changed their lives!

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." (Romans 15:13)