"And now, Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in You." (Psalm 39:7 NASB1995)
It’s been a tough few days.
Saturday afternoon I realized that many of my MOPs friends were posting on social media in shock and grief. A devastating text confirmed the worst: a friend and former parishioner passed away in the night. She was 41 and leaves behind a grieving widower and four children.
Later that evening, I read online that our childhood youth pastor was losing his long battle with cancer. He had been sent home on hospice. He passed Monday morning.
And yesterday, I saw that our dear pastor from our years in San Antonio is fighting a serious infection, hospitalized and facing emergency surgery. We participated in the evening prayer vigil before bed. I spent a fitful night, waking often with these hurting folks on my heart.
For days now, my Facebook feed has been bursting with tributes and prayer requests. I can’t open the app without being bombarded with the memories, condolences and prayers for these amazing people.
This morning Paul David Tripp gets my grief-stricken attention. He writes about hope, reminding the reader: we are hardwired for hope. He tells us there are two kinds of hope: vertical and horizontal. He says, horizontal hope will always suffer from some degree of brokenness. I drag my mind over the fresh fractures in my heart, wincing with pain and knowing he’s right. Only vertical hope will withstand the onslaught of affliction that’s inevitable on earth.
The trouble is, our human tendency is horizontal hope. We want to lay hold of the things we can see and hold and measure. Vertical hope is far more illusive. We can’t quite articulate what it is we are stretching towards. We are torn between these two hopes: we want heaven, but earth feels far more attainable.
I do know, though, with age, experience and compounding loss; my appetite for hope is slowly refining. The things of this earth are holding my interest less tightly. With both parents and a brother passing, I have packed up enough trinkets to last a lifetime. My palate is maturing. Only heaven will hold my attentions. Horizontal hope is too tactile, too trivial, too fleeting. Relationships are the major matters of life: with our Creator and with others. In these connections, our vertical hope is cultivated. It grows like anything else: with time and attention.
"For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially believers." (1 Timothy 4:10 NASB1995)
Lord, help us look up. Draw our souls toward You. Set heaven our hearts on things above. Stretch us in Your direction a bit more each day. Give us grace as we feel the tension building: it’s hard to live here with our hearts are tacked to eternity. Remind us, this shift is critical: we must learn to hope vertically. Amen.