The Path: Finding Hope in the Hopeless

Let us pray…Gracious and loving God, as we come before you this day, we have anxiety and fear about all that is happening around us. These voices have overtaken our lives. So, in the coming moments, we ask that you would help us to calm our spirits, quell our fears, and quiet our anxieties for just a few moments as we hear a word of hope for this day. Grant that we may open our hearts, minds, and spirits to your small, still-speaking voice. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

During World War II, a pharmacist’s mate, Wheeler B. Lipes, Jr., performed a lifesaving appendectomy on Seaman Darrell Dean Rector aboard the submarine, Sea Dragon. Maneuvering behind enemy lines in the Pacific, the closest thing to a doctor on board was pharmacist’s mate Lipes, a lab technician by training, who had witnessed an appendectomy once.

Facing certain death, if not operated upon, Rector agreed to let Lipes operate on him. Without proper surgical instruments, Lipes used a knife blade for a scalpel, a tea strainer to administer ether as an anesthetic, and spoons from the galley to keep the incision open during surgery. To sterilize the crude tools, alcohol from a torpedo was poured over them. The surgery was performed in the officer’s quarters on September 11, 1942, and it was the first appendectomy aboard a submerged submarine. The patient, Rector, resumed his responsibilities after thirteen days.

Can you imagine being submerged in a submarine, under the intense situation of WWII, needing an appendectomy with no surgeon, let alone a doctor of any kind, on board? In my mind, that puts our current situation in a little bit different light right now…yes, we are facing uncertainty. Yes, we are under an intense situation as the spread of the disease can really no longer be traced back to a source and you have to be concerned about leaving your home. Yes, there are many in our local communities who face this disease and the uncertainty of whether or not they would survive it, if they did contract it. Yet, for me, this story puts a lot of things in perspective…and my overriding question for us this morning relates to where we are placing our hope…is it in a cure or is it in the fact that God is with us despite what is happening around us?

Feelings produced by a lack of hope

When we face uncertainty, there are certain emotions and feelings that are going to surface. There is no doubt that despair, abandonment, fear, anxiety, and undoubtedly a feeling of being alone are going to come up. It is inevitable. It is also inevitable that we are going to face these things in a space in our minds and hearts that is going to feel like no one is experiencing these feelings and that we are all alone in this world. This whole circle of emotions and feelings leads us to lose hope.

Let me just say this morning that none of us are alone and I am here to assure you that you are not alone in facing this time. There are many of us gathered in this virtual space right now. We are working on getting connections with people established so that we can still be connected to one another. There is a Care Team in place that will be reaching out to folks and provide that connection. We are connected here on Facebook…we are not alone and there is hope for all of us. The most important thing for us in this day is to remember that God provides us the means and ways to be connected.

Despite these things though, I know that knowing these things will not be much comfort because for some of us there is not much to hope for in this time…and that is one of the feelings I want to address this morning…that feeling is called despair...

Despair

Listen, if you feel like this right now, you are not alone. I know this feeling all too well too. I have been deep in despair and have felt like there is nothing to hope for…for me, it has come at the hands of those I love. This feeling has come at the hands of those I have served, those to whom I have given all of my trust. It is a feeling that goes beyond sadness.

I know it and I hear that from so many I encounter lately. It’s a sense or a feeling that it seems like there is no way this will ever end…here’s the thing though, despite how desperate the feeling might be or seem, there is still somewhere where we can find hope. Remember that Solomon wrote the words of many of the Proverbs at a time when he was facing a lot of these same feelings, yet he found places where God provided comfort and peace. It is interesting to me that many people only turn to God in times of turmoil and out of desperation…despite this and even though this seems like the time to turn to God to scream out in anger or to cry in desperation, God is always beside us. God is beside us in the good and the bad…the thing is, desperation can lead us to feel like God has abandoned us…

A sense of being abandoned by God

In this season of Lent, it is so easy for us to fall into that trap of crying out to God out of our desperation. Maybe you have done this lately. Maybe you have screamed at God about how could God allow this disease to come up and take so many lives. Maybe you have prayed to God about how this has affected you or someone you loved. I want to remind you that Christ did the very same thing from the cross...

Matthew 27:46 NLT

At about three o’clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” which means “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”

Maybe you can identify with what Christ said here and maybe you cannot. If you cannot, count yourself lucky. Feeling like God has abandoned you goes far deeper than any of us could even put into words. But here’s the thing, at least in my mind and in my faith, it is in these times when I want to blame God or put God back on the cross that, if I actually take the time to do so, I can see most clearly where God truly is in our lives.

Think back over your life, to a time when maybe you blamed God for all that was happening to or around you…maybe that was during one of the Great World Wars, or any other of the 20th Centuries wars, or maybe it was during a time when your life was crumbling around you and you were facing separation from someone you loved or maybe it was when one of your parents died. I can remember a time when my mom felt this deep longing because of the death of my grandmother. Yet, here’s the thing, it was also in this time that my mom and I became the closest. We provided the support we each needed. God was there. God was holding us gently, much like a mother hen gathers her chicks when a storm arises. We may not have seen it in the moment but it was at that time in our lives that my mom and I became more connected to one another and to the one who gave us to each other. We too can experience this closeness despite being physically separate and I wonder if that is not how God is working in this situation. Here’s the thing, we need to be open to receiving someone who might reach out to us in this time. Because, the problem is that when we close ourselves off from God and one another completely, we are really apt to lose hope…and there are consequences to that...

The outcome of a lack of hope

When we feel like all hope is gone, we begin to self-isolate from one another. I know that right now that we have no other choice but to isolate from much of the human contact that we long to have in our lives. Unfortunately, physical separation is required of us right now to keep us safe and healthy. But this means that we need to find new ways of doing things…as hard as change is, there is no choice but to change right now.

I can see so much hope in what is happening around us…one thing that I have noticed more of lately on the news is that the newscasters are finding and reporting stories that bring joy and comfort to others. Like the one about the young girl standing outside her grandfather’s nursing home window to show him her engagement ring or the story about the pizza shop in Emmaus providing meals for an elderly man who does not cook. These are the kinds of things that I look for in everyday life and longed for prior to this pandemic. To me this is God in the moment and God showing us how we can stay connected to God and one another amid the issues and strife of the day.

These kind of stories give me hope that we will make it through this time. The fact that we have several folks who stepped forward to provide a constant contact, speaks volumes about the hope that we see in this situation. These are people who are willing to reach out and share God’s love…that is what we are told to do after all, isn’t it?

Listen, we will get to the end of this crisis and look back over time and realize that it made us stronger but my prayer is that when we can look back that we also see how our hopes, our dreams, our love for one another fulfilled God’s promises that we would never be alone. In the end, we are God’s hands and feet in this realm. Our actions during this time will prove this passage to be true...

Proverbs 13:9 NLT

The life of the godly is full of light and joy, but the light of the wicked will be snuffed out.

By reaching out to each other, we can be the light and joy in this world of darkness and despair…Amen.