Hope In God

Psalm 14:1 (NLT)

1 Only fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their actions are evil; not one of them does good!

The contempt it puts upon the honour of God: for there is something of practical atheism at the bottom of all sin. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. We are sometimes tempted to think, "Surely there never was so much atheism and profaneness as there is in our days;' but we see the former days were no better; even in David's time there were those who had arrived at such a height of impiety as to deny the very being of a God and the first and self-evident principles of religion.  ---- Those are the words of Matthew Henry who died in 1714. We see from his words and the words of The Bible that the former days were no better.

[In the summer of 2010 the popular author and atheist Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer. With his usual candor and clarity, Hitchens movingly described his battle with the illness in an article he wrote for Vanity Fair.

I am badly oppressed by a gnawing sense of waste. I had real plans for my next decade and felt I'd worked hard enough to earn it. Will I really not live to see my children married? To watch the World Trade Center rise again?. … To the dumb question "Why me?" the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?

I sometimes wish I were suffering in a good cause, or risking my life for the good of others, instead of just being a gravely endangered patient. Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison to plant into your arm [his chemotherapy treatment] and you either read or don't read a book while the venom sack gradually empties into your system … . You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water. [Christopher Hitchens, "Topic of Cancer," Vanity Fair (September 2010)]]

Without God there is a sense of hopelessness when faced with a grave situation. There is no one to turn to except self and self already knows what the inevitable truth is. At least they believe they know the truth; yet they have been fooled. They have been outwitted by Satan.

However there is hope in God and the salvation provided through Jesus Christ. When faced with death instead of seeing the end, we can see a new beginning. We have hope of eternal life that is pleasant and joyous. We know because of the hope of salvation in Jesus Christ that believers will one day be reunited with those we have loved. It is that hope in God that keeps us from foolish acts, because we know life continues even after death.

Pray for those who do not know God and Jesus Christ. Pray they will come to know their grace, mercy and love. Pray even for those who may offend you for they know not what they do. Let us love like Jesus to show others the hope in God.