Unassailable Hope

Today a confluence of factors including a movie and scripture readings bring me to the theme of man’s need for a sense of significance.  As in the movie City Slickers, we find it especially arising in midlife crises.  At a certain point a sense of mortality combines with a sense that whatever we have done or are doing does not amount to a hill of beans.  Our attempts to build up our daily jobs and lives into something of significance gives way to quiet desperation. Hope is lost that we will ever amount to much.  And this quiet despair goes for everyone, even those with high status jobs or social positions.  Vanity, all is vanity becomes the feeling on all fronts.  This is where religion rides to the rescue.  We each have a life-long role to play that is pervasive and supersedes all other accomplishments and tasks.  It is a fundamental task open to those of all social and marital statuses, occupations, incomes, races, sexes, ages, and mental and physical abilities.  We are to fulfill our individual callings to become ambassadors of Christ in our own way using our best gifts.  Nothing is more important and more accessible to all.  Nothing puts us more on an equal footing while imbuing each of us with eternal significance. Nothing depends less on external conditions or advantages.  We can be ambassadors no matter what jobs we hold or don’t hold, where we live or don’t live, how many our resources or how little.  Is there any wonder that religion has outlived thousands of years of skepticism and unbelief?  We cannot prevail without an unassailable hope, and that comes only from a spiritual rather than a material perspective.

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