All Other Ground is Sinking Sand

Was it always this hard to be hopeful? That's a real question; I've only ever been an adult in this era. I have vivid memories of staying home the day after the Columbine shooting because someone had painted "trench coat mafia" graffiti all over our school's tennis court- a joke, I suppose. But still... in the moment, we were aghast- all but certain we had witnessed an evil that would only occur once in a generation.

I also remember the night of the 9/11 attacks. We lived in a military town, and everyone was chattering about how we were also a target because of Moody Air Force Base. Somewhere around 2:00 AM, an enormous thunderclap woke me up, and I assumed it was the next attack that all the adults in my life had assured me was coming sooner rather than later. I wondered if I should wake up my parents and tell them or just let them find out in the morning.

And I remember graduating from college into a job market that, frankly, didn't exist. Even with a relatively "safe" degree that carried teaching certification, employment wasn't in the cards for many of us. We massaged the gig economy and multiple part-time, dead-end jobs into a monthly rent check and utilities while all the adults in our lives told us that we should stop hitting up Starbucks if we were worried about money- not that any of us paid for coffee because the baristas were also in our graduating class.

And, and, and...

The housing bubble. A global pandemic. The resurrection of measles. The list is endless.

Hope is hard. And, for what it's worth, the church's stance on hope hasn't been especially helpful for a while now. Preaching that better days are coming falls on deaf ears when it is not married to action to bring those days to fruition.

And yet, when we go back and really examine the Word, we see that the hope we've been sold by generations of Sunday school isn't especially the hope that Jesus preached. Jesus didn't tell his disciples that his 5000 followers would be okay because God has a special love for the hungry; he said "You give them something to eat." That's the kind of rock I can stand on.

On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand:

all other ground is sinking sand;

all other ground is sinking sand.