Hope

I go to the land-fill every few months, with a new load of garbage. For the most part that garbage is made up of things that at one time were new and exciting to me. As I toss the items into the bin, I am always struck with the reality of how temporal everything is. Everything eventually ends up as trash.

The tragically funny thing is that I can go to the land-fill so often and throw so many items into that smelly abyss, and still the next day I am putting my hope back into some new, finite, failing, rusting, rotting thing. I say ‘tragically’ because this equation only has one outcome. It can only ever end in despair. Since how could a perishing thing ever give hope and rest to a soul? Whether it is a relationship, an item, a place, a vacation, a dream – anything temporal will run out, and how can something that will disappear be able to offer something eternal?

There is only One that doesn’t perish; only One that doesn’t change, and therefore only One in whom we can find a foundation that will not crack under our feet. Even the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll (Rev 6.14) and the earth will undergo refining (2 Pt 3.10), but the glory of the Lord will endure forever (Psalm 104.31). As the Psalmist writes,

“They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.” (Psalm 102.26-27)

“How foolish a thing to set our hearts upon what shall perish and be no more what it is now… How unworthy are other things to be the centre of our souls, [things] that change in our very using of them and slide away in our enjoyment of them…Perishing things can be no support to the soul; if we would have rest we must run to God and rest in God.” (Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, 103).

By Ryley Heppner| British Columbia