"what conceivable victory"

It's like taking a deep breath again when you've been suffocating for longer than your lungs can take.  Like gulping one cool glass after another when you've forgotten to drink all day.  That's what it feels like when I sit down to read the Scripture recently.  I'm not quite sure why . . . you know I never stopped, never fasted from this Bread.  I suppose for some misunderstood reason I was force-feeding it to my spirit.  But now, as my heart heals . . . I'm ravenous for it.  Literally delicious.

My word for today is Hope.


"Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.  By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen."  -Hebrews 11:1,3


Robyn's translation: As sure as we can see the stars, so sure can we see His promises for which we hope so deeply.  God's part is to bring it to pass.  Our part is to persevere in hoping for it.  Whatever it is, no matter what it is.  We can't do His part and He won't do ours.


Back to Corrie ten Boom - Oh, what hope she had!  She redefines hope, even.


May I have the privilege of setting the scene for the quote today? . . .


Miraculously, Corrie had received a single copy of each of the four gospels, smuggled even into her solitary confinement in a deplorable prison cell guarded by cruel German women who stripped the humanity of Corrie and countless many others.  She would read and reflect on the life of Christ day after lonely day.  Pondering over Jesus's suffering and seeming defeat one day, she came to this epiphany:


"But . . . if the Gospels were truly the pattern of God's activity, then defeat was only the beginning.  I would look around at the bare little cell and wonder what conceivable victory could come from a place like this." 


And my friends, she wasn't being sarcastic.  She was actually looking for the good God was in the process of doing.  Though it was near-impossible to picture in the middle of painful, dark, drab, and lonely, she was hoping for God's promises of victory.  She was sharing in Christ's suffering.  I wonder - was it just as difficult in those moments on the Cross to see the victory of Resurrection and Salvation?  It must have been, had to have been.  But neither Jesus nor Corrie were hopeless.  They SAW the victory before it came, as sure as the Creation of the Universe.  


It's like God was saying, "Do you trust that there is a ground to stand on?  Of course you do - and I made the ground out of nothing.  So even though you may not perceive the Good I'm bringing you while you're standing in the middle of nothingness - here it comes!"


And what was the conceivable victory God brought to Corrie?  Her perseverance through suffering was God's deliverance of a countless legacy of souls who came into God's kingdom after she was freed from a concentration camp and began almost immediately to speak her testimony in her own country and then around the world.  She even witnessed the repentance and salvation of the man who betrayed her into the hands of her tormentors.  Even shook his hand.   Gospel.  Good News.  Christ's forgiveness.  Eternity for lives un-countable.  

Yeah, I'd call that Victory.  Chalk one up for us. Game, set, match.  


And that's hope.  What, you don't see it?  Take a look at the stars.  See it now?  


Me too.  It's coming.