Article by Scott Hubbard
T wo years after he lost his son, you could tell he had Two years after he lost his son, you could tell he had changed. Death had stolen into his family and pierced him, shattered him, broken him. Yet gradually, haltingly, he crawled up from that pit and limped among the living again. And over time, friends could see he spoke less quickly, listened more patiently, and was becoming a refuge for the wounded and bereaved. His heart, though battered and torn, had grown bigger for his grief. Years after her own traumatic trials, you could tell she too had changed. She was still sociable, but sarcasm seemed to taint most conversations. Friends couldn’t talk deeply with her anymore, at least not safely. She walked through the world as a Mara, without hope of becoming Naomi again (Ruth 1:20). Her heart, now protected under layers of superficiality, slowly calloused. Though a few details in these two portraits are imagined, the people behind them are not. Almost a decade later, the
faces of this man and this woman remain imprinted on my memory: the first weeping in brokenhearted faith, the second smiling in detached cynicism. No doubt many of us can recall similar faces and similar stories — stories of how suffering softened or hardened someone. How suffering softened or hardened us. When the breakers and waves of sorrow wash over us, some drift into a shoreless sea of hopelessness. And others, through agonized gasps, say to their soul, “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5–6). Hope Against Hope The pages of Scripture are filled with such hopers: psalmists who remember God’s works at midnight (Psalm 77), prophets who sing during famines (Habakkuk 3:17–19), worshipers who trust God, though he slays them (Job 13:15). Like Abraham, all these “in hope . . . believed against hope”
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