I'm in the middle of a five-week sermon series on hope, the object of which I believe we're starting to lose, as a nation, as a generation or two or as a world. Hope is hard to find these days. Nothing I've seen from any of the presidential candidates is making me feel a bit more hopeful than the other.
Then I read this: roughly half of all Spaniards between 16 and 24 are jobless, the highest level among the 17 nations that use the euro. It's a devastating picture of blighted youth that threatens to distort Spain's social fabric for years to come, dooming dreams, straining family structures and eroding the well-being of a rapidly aging population. The staggering jobless figures - 48.6 percent for Spaniards between 16 and 24; 39 percent for those ages 20-29 - hold dire consequences for a country that grew accustomed to prosperity on the back of a property boom that collapsed in 2008.
In Greece last week, that country continued to face political turmoil over a sovereign debt crisis that has embroiled the country for almost two years. The Greek government said it would hold new elections in the face of massive demonstrations against a new austerity package that was approved on Sunday in exchange for a European Union-International Monetary Fund bailout. Under the austerity deal, Greece will fire 15,000 public sector workers this year and 150,000 by 2015. The minimum wage will be reduced by 22 percent, and pension plans will be be cut.
You name it and it's bad. This nation is fighting (and losing) the jobless battle, and we go on at the Oscars and such as if things were as good as they ever were. And they're not.
And yet we don't turn to the one who can help, the only one who can provide hope.
Looking into hope in all the wrong places, I found these words in the book of Job, the book most closely tied to human suffering and it's attempted explanation.
The Bible says, "13 “Yet if you devote your heart to him
and stretch out your hands to him,
14 if you put away the sin that is in your hand
and allow no evil to dwell in your tent,
15 then, free of fault, you will lift up your face;
you will stand firm and without fear.
16 You will surely forget your trouble,
recalling it only as waters gone by.
17 Life will be brighter than noonday,
and darkness will become like morning.
18 You will be secure, because there is hope; you will look about you and take your rest in safety.
Because there is hope still in this world, all the other stuff doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is where our hope comes from.
The Bible also says, "I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth."
No generation is lost, if it turns to the Lord. No one is helpless if they take hold of the hope that comes from God. No one.
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