Faith, Hope, and Love are three of the most important virtues of Christians. They are also important to other religions. Of these three Love is always considered as the most important. In Scripture it says, “they will know we are Christians by our love”. The most important commandment in Judo-Christian tradition is to love God and to love your neighbor. I have addressed this in my blog, Love, in which C. S. Lewis calls love divine energy. I have also addressed this in my blog, Finding God, where love is one of the pathways to God. In the First Epistle of John, it clearly states that God is Love. So, we have covered Love in some detail. But as we begin the new year of 2022, I believe we need to discuss Hope. We need hope for a better future.
Christians are also people of hope, which is based on their faith. Hope implies that we have faith that the future will be better than it presently is. But as we begin 2022 there is much to cause anxiety and concern. A new strain of the virus is spreading rapidly, fortunately it does not seem to be as dangerous as the original virus. Many children are still not back in school because of teacher union walk outs in many of the large cities; inflation continues to rise hurting our personal budgets; we are no longer energy independent causing the cost to heat our homes, drive our cars and run our factories to rise. Government imposed vaccine shot mandates, with no exceptions for medical or religious reasons, is causing us to lose essential persons in medial facilities, police forces, and the armed services. Our Southern border is wide open allowing illegal immigrants to flood into our country (without being tested for covid) along with human trafficking and drugs. Last year over 100,000 people died of drug overdoses. Drugs which came in across our open Southern Border. Marxist ideas are being taught to our children (even the youngest) and parents who question what is being taught have been branded by our government as domestic terrorists. With all of this, we might ask, how can we be Hopeful?
When we say hope implies that we have faith that the future will be better than it presently is, we are saying that hope depends on faith and that Faith, Hope, and Love are virtues that are closely linked. For Christians, faith is based on a belief that what the Prophets, God, and Jesus have revealed to us is true. How sincere are we in that belief? In one of the most quoted Psalms in the Bible it says, “Even thought I walk in the dark valley I fear no evil, for You are at my side, with Your rod and Your staff that give me courage”. That courage, or hope, comes in the trust that God’s presence will protect us. It is expressed even more clearly in Romans, Chapter 8, in which it states, “If God is with us, who can be against us?” But how do we know that God is with us? That was the important question I raised in my recent blog, “Is it Time for Sackcloths?”
The sackcloth wasworn as a token of mourning by the Israelites. It was also a sign of submission or of grief and self-humiliation. God, who saved the Israelites from slavery in Egypt had to forgive them often but expected them to not continue to backslide. He is merciful but his mercy requires living according to his will. The same God that inspired and guided our Founding Fathers is the God that made a covenant with the Jewish Nation and brought them out of slavery in Egypt. Unfortunately, when God helps us, we humans have short memories and often slide back to the dark side. This is what the Jewish Nation did on numerous occasions, praying to golden images and the gods of the nations they encountered. Fortunately, God is not only all powerful, but he is also merciful! When the Jewish Nation realized (often pointed out by the Prophets) that God was no longer with them, they repented and asked for forgiveness. They put on sackcloth and prayed for God once more to guide them and answer their prayers.
Sackcloth is a metaphor for us representing sincere repentance and prayer. I believe that the United States has fallen into the same backsliding that the Jewish Nation did on their journey from Egypt to the promised land.
For example, In God We Trust still appears on our currency but God has been removed from many other places. Liberal, Marxist, and Progressive elements have used the courts and other means to get God excluded from our schools, the Ten Commandments have been removed from our courtrooms, phrases such as “One Nation Under God” and other references to God have been removed or replaced in our songs and pledges. The social media giants, Facebook, Twitter, and Google in their continued effort to limit freedom of speech have decided reference to God, in particular His Son, Jesus Christ, is too radical and offensive to too many people so they have banned such comments from social media. During the pandemic that caused shutdowns by many politicians, they banned Church gatherings but allowed liquor stores and other businesses open. Clearly in the United States there has been a movement away from God toward a materialistic and secular society. This has moved us toward the dark times mentioned in the beginning. Darkness is the absence of light. That light is of God. So, what do we do?
We have removed God from so much of what was good about the country, but it is not too late to restore God into his proper place. It is time for us to act. It is time for us to recognize we are running out of time and we need to fervently pray for God to heal our country. For us, sackcloth serves only as a metaphor but we all know when we have drifted away from God. We need to repent and put God back into our individual lives, our families, our communities, our churches, and most of all back into the everyday lives of our country. When we do this God will lead us out of the darkness.
In the blog, is it Time for Sackcloths? I even offered a prayer which is included below:
God hear my voice; we have been walking in darkness. We have placed material wealth and approval voices from social media as our gods. This day I repent of my dark ways and yearn to walk in light once again with you. May I truly mean in God we trust as our Founding Fathers did. May my life be an honest reflection of that and may it serve as a shining example to others. Let us once again learn to love God and to love our neighbor. That is the most important commandment we were asked to follow; let us do that! May we be truly representative of the type of country envisioned by our Founding Fathers. May we return to that vision; a shining City on a hill offering love and freedom to all who are in need. Join me in my prayer. May this prayer, or a similar one, be repeated hundreds of thousands of times by all our citizens. May God hear our host of prayers and lead us out of darkness. God Bless America.
I included this pray to indicate how I was trying to express my sincere repentance and loss. In retrospect, the prayer was perhaps too long. To get everyone on board the prayer probably needs to be shortened. Perhaps something such as “God, you are no longer the center of our life, we and have drifted away. Forgive us. God of Mercy and Second Chances, hear our prayer and heal our nation. Amen! Whatever the length of the prayer it must be sincere. Remember God knows what is on our hearts.
Putting on sackcloths by the Jewish Nation could not be for show. God knows our hearts and if we are not sincere, he will not forgive us. What was true for the Jewish Nation is also true for our nation. Remember God allowed the Jewish Nation to go back into captivity in Babylon because they kept backsliding. He will not heal our nation if we are not sincere.
We are sincere when we have unwavering faith. Recall that we said that hope depends on faith, and that faith is based on a belief that what the Prophets, God, and Jesus has revealed to us is true. Jesus came to us in human form to reveal to us that if we followed him, we would, through the grace of God, have salvation. Salvation meaning eternal life with God the Father in Heaven. Eternal life in Heaven with God is such a mind-blowing concept it was difficult for we humans to comprehend. However, for whatever reason in our time God has allowed many humans to witness what Heaven is like and return to earth to tell us what they experienced. This has occurred through near death experiences (NDEs) and was reported in some detail in my blog, Angels, Aliens, and Afterlife. Clearly, we have every reason to have Faith which leads to Hope.
The good news is that God is always there awaiting our return. But Hope is not a wish, it requires action. In this case bringing God back into our everyday life is a requirement for us to return to Him. Recognizing the loneliness (and hopelessness) we experience when God is not with us will provide the motivation to seek Him. But we must be sincere, remember God knows what is on our hearts. So let us each day talk to God and ask for forgiveness for drifting away from Him and following secular gods. If everyone in our family, our community, our nation will pray for God to hear our cry for forgiveness, he will hear us and heal our nation. There is hope for 2022.
Will Lannes