In this eyewitness testimony of lament, the prophets, priests, and kings have become nothing (Lam. 2:9-10), the glory of the Temple lies in ruins (2:7-8), and everything else that the people of God could cling to for hope has been removed. The daunting reality is that God’s people cannot escape this judgment by their own power, and everywhere they look there is nothing and no one that can help them escape this suffering, but God.

I will never forget the moment when hope died in me. Over and over again, the cadre in the Army school I had attended would yell, “Hope is not a course of action!” Within this frame of mind, I began to believe that hope was nothing more than a fancy pipe dream—where I placed my trust in something outside of my control. Hope was simply a wish for something better. Hope was the illusion that if I could get a night off from patrolling the desert looking for enemies, life would be good. If I could get an actual meal and not eat an MRE (Meal Ready to Eat), things would be better.

And then it happened. In the midst of an infiltration in the middle of the night, where every single plan was failing to come to fruition, hope died inside of me. I came to believe that hope was not a course of action. Action and hope were in no way related. Hope was fanciful, wishful thinking, and useless. Action was of a completely different nature. If my team was going to succeed in effectively accomplishing our mission, it was in our hands—not some illusion of hope.

The Competing Philosophies of Hope versus No Hope

Years later when the Lord Jesus Christ called me to himself, there was an inescapable pattern of hope in his authoritative word. In fact, hope seemed to be one of the primary attributes of the believer (see Hebrews 11). Yet this hope was not just wishful thinking, but a certain future reality.

The more I wrestled with this idea of hope, the more often I found myself at the crossroads of competing philosophies of hope versus no hope. Even harder to grasp was embracing hope in the midst of suffering. Deep down, if we are honest, suffering has a way of igniting in us the desire to escape pain by any and all possible means.

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