Finding Hope in Despair

“Today’s cursed,” I announced with resignation, staring numbly at the broken plate and the carnage of my would-be lunch (baked potato) scattered all over the floor. 

It actually hadn’t been that bad of a day up to that point—I was just tired and crabby. Our apartment was a mess. I had a lot of to-dos to catch up on. I’d woken up dreading the day, and my mood hadn’t changed. 

And now, the lunch that I’d hoped would cheer me up and fuel me to face the day lay strewn all over the floor. 

My husband, knowing I was in no mood for what had just happened, rushed over and gave me a quick hug. “I’ve got this,” he said, and started cleaning up the mess. “I’ll pick up lunch for you. What do you want?” 

Ironically enough, it was that incident, with its unique blend of tragic and comic, that turned the day around for me. I was reminded of all the gifts I have—at the very top of that list, an incredibly caring and supportive spouse. 

More than that, I was reminded that I don’t have to go through these kinds of days alone. And that I never am alone, even when it feels like it. 

A favorite and formative portion of Scripture for me has long been the book of 2 Corinthians. I think perhaps for me this is because more than in any of his other writings, 2 Corinthians reveals the way in which Paul’s character and his understanding of the gospel has been profoundly shaped and tested by a long season of hardship. 

In some of Paul’s writings, what shines through most clearly is how transfixed and transformed he  has been by encountering the truth of the resurrection of Christ. In 2 Corinthians, Paul is still anchored in that solid hope, but he also seems incredibly weary and even broken down by all that he’d endured, both physical suffering and the exhausting demands of ministering to difficult people. And so in 2 Corinthians, Paul is forced more than ever to lean into that part of our theology that we often don’t want to think about: a theology of suffering. Paul writes, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:8–9 NIV). 

When life’s hardships went “far beyond” Paul’s ability to put a positive spin on it, Paul found himself needing to relearn a hope based on Christ carrying us through life’s hardships—indeed, death itself—not being carried around those hardships. 

Of course, a broken plate and a ruined lunch is not anything like the kind of hardships Paul and the early apostles and believers in Jesus faced—on its own, my little mishap doesn’t even qualify as a hardship. But the broken plate wasn’t really the problem. Little incidents like that get to us, not because they’re so bad on their own but because they add one more struggle on top of everything else. That rough day didn’t happen on its own but as part of a difficult season in which what was happening nationally, globally, and in the lives of our friends left both me and my husband struggling daily with varying degrees of despair. 

All of us in the ups and downs of daily life face the same essential question: how do we forge a life of hope when the reality of death is always burdening our hearts?

And it’s when we admit that this is the deepest struggle we’re journeying through that we can grow in our reliance upon Christ. As Paul explained, our hope in Christ comes most alive when we lean into our profound need for God: “We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:11 NIV). 

A favorite writer of mine, Kate Bowler, puts it this way: “Life is a chronic condition. And there’s no cure for being human.” Words that could be discouraging if we were looking for a cure for our humanness, if we thought God would magically mix life for us into one that doesn’t involve struggle and disappointment and heartbreak.  

But these are words that are hopeful when we remember that Christ’s death and life has profoundly dignified the experience and unavoidable struggle of being human. Christ—God made human—reveals that it’s in embracing the vulnerabilities of being human that we will also find true joy. And taste the inexplicable resurrection hope of the One who has taken that journey before us. 

—Written by Monica LaRose. Used by permission from the author.