Hope Wins

Last semester on campus there was an inordinate amount of pain in our InterVarsity community. After almost eleven years on campus, I expect there to be plenty of junk in people's lives. In fact, I generally count on 20% of the people at any given time to be in some sort of significant personal difficulty or crisis: depression, family struggles, calling/major/future despair, faith struggles, near financial ruin, near academic ruin, stuck in a significant sin pattern, or addicted to Facebook (which are more or less coterminous).

Last semester, it was like 40 or 50%. Ridiculous. Everyone was falling apart. InterVarsity felt like the UNC spiritual/emotional/mental ER.

So tonight I'm kicking off a three week series where I'm getting to speak at our large group about how God meets us in the midst of brokenness. I'm excited about helping folks see how the Christian story and how Jesus Christ himself meets people stuck in brokenness and desparation.

And my job tonight is to convince people of one simple reality: hope wins.

It has struck me as I've been thinking about this talk that if hope hasn't really already won, then we are stuck in our hopelessness. And ultimately, it's a question of life and death. If death really has the last word, then most anything else other than despair is just living in denial and diversion. Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

But the Father has sent the Christ. The Christ has not avoided death but dealt with it head-on and won. In Christ the Father has spoken his final "yes" to our deepest and wildest hopes and dreams.

Despair does not have the last word. Neither does mourning. Jesus meets death and is victorious over it. Not only that, he has invited us to participate in that victory along with him. Brokenness here in the Land of the Ruins is an inevitable experience but it is not the inevitable consequence of all of life. It is not the Last Word. Joy is. Hope wins.