For thirty-three years Oluseyi drew maps for a living. He was a land surveyor with the state ministry in Ijebu-Ode, and in the days before computer drafting he produced survey plans by hand: boundary lines in black ink, bearings and distances written in a neat, upright script, and a north arrow in the corner that his younger colleagues used to say was the most beautiful arrow in the ministry. Lawyers recognised his plans across the room. His hand never shook.
Four years after he retired, it began to. At first it was only his right thumb, a small rhythmic tremor when he was resting. Then it spread to the hand, and the hand grew slow and stiff. The neurologist at the teaching hospital in Sagamu gave it a name. Parkinson’s disease. There were medicines that would help, the doctor said, and exercises, and he could live well for many years. But it was progressive. It would not go away.
The moment that undid him came at the bank. His pension required an annual verification, and the young officer behind the counter slid a form across to him and asked him to sign. He took the pen. What came out was a trembling scrawl that looked nothing like the specimen signature on file. He tried again. Worse. The officer was kind. She said they could take his thumbprint instead. Oluseyi pressed his thumb into the ink pad, the man who had drawn the most beautiful north arrow in the ministry, and walked out to the car park without speaking.
On Sunday the pastor laid hands on him, and the church prayed with great faith. Afterwards an old friend embraced him and said, “By this time next year, you will be signing like before.” Oluseyi thanked him. But a few weeks later he sat in my office and asked a question that I suspect many believers carry and seldom say aloud.
“I have prayed. I am still praying. But if it does not get better, what then? What exactly am I supposed to be hoping for?”
PunchlineIt is one of the most important questions a Christian can ask, and the answer the New Testament gives is richer than most of us expect.
When hope has the wrong object
Most of what we call hope is attached to an improvement in circumstances. We hope the job comes through, the test results are clear, the son comes home, the exchange rate stabilises, the marriage heals. None of those hopes is wrong. Many of them are good things to pray for, and God answers such prayers. But if hope can only mean “my situation will get better soon,” then every unresolved situation becomes a slow death of hope. And some situations stay unresolved for a very long time.
Oluseyi’s friend meant well. But he had attached hope to a single outcome, a steady hand by next year. If that outcome did not arrive, what would be left?
The Bible speaks of hope in a different way. Biblical hope has an object, and that object lies beyond any improvement in our present circumstances. Paul told the Colossians about “the hope which is laid up for you in heaven” (Colossians 1:5), and he described it to Titus as “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). The object of Christian hope is Christ Himself, risen and returning, and the future He has promised to those who belong to Him.
That changes everything. If the object of my hope is a better year, my hope rises and falls with the news. If the object of my hope is the risen Christ and the world He will bring, then my hope stands even on the day the neurologist says progressive.
A living hope born from an empty tomb
Peter wrote his first letter to scattered believers who were suffering for their faith and had no realistic prospect of their circumstances improving soon. He did not open by promising them a better year. He opened with praise for something that had already happened: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3).
Notice where hope comes from. It is “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” Christian hope is grounded in an event in history. On a particular morning, outside a particular city, a tomb was found empty, and the crucified Jesus was seen alive by His disciples. Our hope for the future is fastened to something God has already done in the past. That is why Peter calls it “a lively hope,” a living hope. It lives because He lives.
Then Peter describes what this hope looks towards: “an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:4). Each word rules out something that happens to earthly inheritances. Land can be seized, houses can decay, family property can become the subject of a twenty-year court case. This inheritance cannot be spoiled, polluted or worn out. And it is “reserved,” kept under guard. So are we: we “are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5).
Peter is completely honest about the present. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Peter 1:6). Rejoicing and heaviness sit in the same sentence. The living hope does not cancel the grief of the present season. It holds the grief inside a larger story, one in which “the trial of your faith” is “much more precious than of gold that perisheth” and will “be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:7).
And then comes one of the tenderest lines in the New Testament: “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8). These believers had never seen Jesus. Their circumstances had not been fixed. Yet they loved Him, and their joy was real. Hope had a face. And Peter tells them where it all leads: “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:9).
Paul states the stakes plainly in his great chapter on the resurrection: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20). A Christianity that only promises improvements in this life is a pitiable thing, because this life always ends in a grave. But Christ is the firstfruits, the first sheaf of a harvest that will certainly follow. What God did for Jesus in the garden tomb, He will do for all who are in Him.
NuggetChristian hope is fastened to what God has already done in raising Jesus from the dead. Because that has happened, the future He has promised is certain, whatever this year brings.
A creation that groans and waits
Paul’s fullest treatment of hope in suffering comes in Romans 8, and it speaks directly to Oluseyi’s trembling hand.
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they , but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit , the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it .
Paul begins with a comparison. “The sufferings of this present time” are real, and he does not minimise them. But they are “not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” He is not asking us to pretend the suffering is small. He is asking us to set it on the scale beside something unimaginably larger.
Then he widens the lens to the whole of creation. Creation “was made subject to vanity,” to frustration and futility, after the fall. Things decay. Bodies wear out. Floods come and harvests fail. But this subjection was “in hope,” because creation itself “shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.” The world is not heading for meaningless collapse. It is heading for liberation. Paul uses the image of childbirth: “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” The pains are real, but they are birth pains. Something is coming.
And then he brings it home to believers: “even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Christians groan. The Spirit-filled, the faithful and the prayerful groan. We have “the firstfruits of the Spirit,” a real foretaste of the life to come, and that foretaste makes us long even more for the whole. What we are waiting for is specific: “the redemption of our body.” Christian hope is not the escape of the soul from the body. It is the resurrection and renewal of the body itself.
That was the answer to Oluseyi’s question. What was he supposed to be hoping for? He was hoping for the redemption of his body: the same body, with the same hands, raised and made new, never to tremble again.
Paul then makes a statement about the nature of hope that every suffering believer should underline: “hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” Hope, by definition, concerns what has not yet arrived. The fact that you cannot see it yet is not evidence that your hope is false. It is simply what hope is. And the right response is patience, the Greek hypomone, the steady endurance of someone who stays under the weight because he knows what is coming.
Paul says the same to the Philippians in words that seem written for anyone whose body is failing:
For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
“Our vile body.” The word translated vile means lowliness or humiliation. Paul is not despising the body God made. He is describing it as it is now: weak, vulnerable, subject to disease, a body of humiliation. Every person who has pressed a thumb into an ink pad because the hand would not obey knows what he means. And Christ “shall change” it, so that it is “fashioned like unto his glorious body.” The resurrection body of Jesus, the body the disciples touched and ate with by the lake, is the pattern for ours.
Hope and prayer for healing
Someone will ask whether all this means we should stop praying for healing. It does not.
I believe God heals today. The New Testament instructs the sick to “call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (James 5:14), and promises that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (James 5:15). We should pray with faith and expectation, and many believers can testify to healings that doctors could not explain. Healing in this life is a real gift and a real foretaste of the resurrection. When God heals a body today, He is giving a preview of what He will do for every body in Christ on the last day.
At the same time, Scripture is honest that healing does not always come in this life. Paul, through whom God worked extraordinary miracles, wrote at the end of his ministry, “Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick” (2 Timothy 4:20). He did not explain it. He simply reported it. Faithful believers in every generation have prayed with faith and still died of their illnesses. That is not proof that they lacked faith, and it is cruel to suggest it.
Biblical hope allows us to hold both together. We pray boldly for healing now. We take the medicine, do the exercises and follow the doctor’s advice, because medical care is one of God’s good gifts. And our hope does not depend on the outcome, because its object is beyond it. If healing comes now, we rejoice. If it does not, the redemption of our body is still coming, and it will be complete.
There is also an emotional dimension to chronic illness that deserves care. Grief over lost abilities is real. Depression is common in long-term illness, including Parkinson’s, and it is treatable. If you are living with a condition that will not go away and you find yourself sinking into a darkness that does not lift, tell your doctor and tell someone you trust. Hope in Christ and treatment for depression are not rivals.
An oath you can stand on
PunchlineHow can we be sure about a future we cannot see? The writer to the Hebrews answers by pointing back to Abraham, and to a moment when God did something unusual.
For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec.
The writer is alluding to the scene on Mount Moriah, after Abraham had been willing to offer Isaac:
And the angel of the LORD called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD , for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
“By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD.” People swear by something greater than themselves, the writer to the Hebrews observes, and an oath ends all argument. But there is nothing greater than God. So God swore by Himself. He placed His own name and nature behind His promise.
Why would He do that? God’s word alone is completely trustworthy. He did not need an oath to bind Himself. The writer explains that God was “willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel.” The oath was for Abraham’s sake, and for ours. God knew how weak human confidence can be, so He gave “two immutable things,” His promise and His oath, “in which it was impossible for God to lie.” He stooped to our weakness to give us “a strong consolation.”
Notice who receives this consolation: those “who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” The language may echo the cities of refuge in the Law of Moses, where a person in danger could run and be safe. Hope here is something we run to and seize, as a frightened man might grab hold of a doorpost.
And then the famous image: “Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast.” An anchor does not stop the storm. The wind still blows and the waves still lift the ship. What the anchor does is keep the ship from being driven onto the rocks. Hope does not make Parkinson’s disappear. It keeps Oluseyi from being driven onto the rocks of despair.
But this anchor is unusual. Ordinary anchors are dropped down into the seabed. This one “entereth into that within the veil.” It is cast upward, into the Most Holy Place of heaven itself, “Whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus.” The word forerunner describes one who runs ahead, like a scout sent before an army, and it implies that others will follow. Jesus has gone ahead of us into the presence of God. Our anchor is fixed where He is. And because He is “an high priest for ever,” the anchor cannot be dislodged.
Look again at what is said about Abraham: “after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.” Abraham waited twenty-five years for Isaac. Paul says of him that “against hope believed in hope” (Romans 4:18). His hope was not wishful thinking about his chances. It was confidence in the God who had sworn.
Those who died not having received
Here we must face something hard. Hebrews 6 says Abraham obtained the promise. Hebrews 11 says something that looks at first like the opposite:
These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them , and embraced them , and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country. And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned. But now they desire a better country , that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.
“These all died in faith, not having received the promises.” Abraham saw Isaac, but he never saw his descendants become as numerous as the stars. He lived in tents in the land God promised and owned only a burial cave. He received a first instalment, and he died still waiting for the rest.
This is honest and deeply comforting. Some believers will see their situation resolved in this life. Others will die in faith with the situation unresolved, still holding the promises at a distance. Both are commended. Neither has been abandoned. “Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city.”
A man whose hope is tied to the resolution of his situation will eventually give up if it stays unresolved. A man whose hope is in God and His prepared city can keep going, because the outcome of this one chapter does not decide the outcome of the whole book. That is why the writer urges his readers to “shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end” and to be “followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:11-12). Faith and patience together. Hope keeps faith walking on a long road.
Job had reached that kind of place. He had lost his children, his wealth and his health, and his friends were accusing him. And from the ash heap he spoke one of the great confessions of the Old Testament:
For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body , yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.
“Yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Job had no idea, at that moment, that his fortunes would be restored. He spoke of a Redeemer who lives, and of seeing God with his own eyes after his skin had been destroyed. That is resurrection hope, centuries before the empty tomb, and it held him up while everything else was falling.
Waiting like a watchman
What does living by this hope actually look like in an unresolved season? The psalmist gives us a picture:
I wait for the LORD , my soul doth wait, and in his word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. Let Israel hope in the LORD : for with the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption.
“More than they that watch for the morning.” The watchman on the city wall spent the night awake, peering into darkness. He could not make the sun rise. But he did not doubt that it would. His waiting was not passive. He stayed at his post, did his duty and kept his eyes on the east. And his confidence rested on the faithfulness of the One who orders the morning.
That is how hope supports patient faithfulness. You keep doing the next right thing while you wait. You take the medicine. You go to work. You love your family. You pray. You serve where you can. You tell God honestly how hard it is. Hope does not require you to pretend that the night is not dark. It requires only that you stay at your post and keep looking east.
Hope also changes how we grieve. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians about believers who had died, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Christians sorrow. We sorrow over losses, diagnoses, deaths and long delays. But we sorrow with a horizon. “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
And hope shapes the present. “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:3). Someone who knows where he is going begins to live in a way that fits the destination. Hope makes us patient with others, generous with what we have, and honest about our sins, because we are preparing to meet the One we love.
Finally, hope grows in company. Scripture is full of people waiting together. The watchmen on the wall took turns. Paul writes that the Scriptures were given “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). Read them with others. Let other believers remind you of the morning when you cannot see it.
Oluseyi still has Parkinson’s. The medication helps, and some days are better than others. He walks every morning around his compound with a stick, and his granddaughter counts his steps with him. He has not stopped praying for healing, and neither has his church.
But something changed in him after that conversation. Some months later he invited me to his seventieth birthday thanksgiving, and when it was his turn to speak, he stood with a sheet of paper in his trembling hand and said he wanted to explain something about surveying.
“When you survey land,” he said, “you never measure from where you are standing. Where you are standing may be wrong. You find a beacon, a concrete pillar that somebody fixed in the ground before you, and you measure everything from that. If you measure from your own feet, every line will be wrong.”
He looked down at his hand, which was shaking so badly that the paper rustled. Then he looked up and smiled.
“For a long time I was measuring my hope from this hand. Now I measure it from an empty tomb. Jesus has gone ahead and fixed the beacon. My hand shakes. The beacon does not.”
Perhaps your situation is unresolved. You have prayed, and you are still praying, and the answer has not come in the form you hoped. Do not measure your hope from where you are standing. Measure it from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, from the oath God swore by Himself, and from the Forerunner who has entered within the veil for you. That hope is an anchor of the soul, sure and stedfast, and it will not let you go.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What has hope usually been attached to in your life? How does 1 Peter 1:3 give hope a different object?
- Which part of Romans 8:18-25 speaks most directly to your present situation?
- How do you hold together bold prayer for healing or breakthrough and confident hope if it does not come in this life?
- What does it mean to you that God swore by Himself so that you might have “a strong consolation”?
- Where are you being called to wait like a watchman: staying at your post, doing the next right thing, and looking for the morning?
This Week
Each day this week, read one of these passages slowly: 1 Peter 1:3-9, Romans 8:18-25, Hebrews 6:13-20, Hebrews 11:13-16 and Psalm 130. After reading, write one sentence that begins, “My hope is not in... My hope is in...” and complete it honestly for your present situation. On the last day, share one of your sentences with a believer you trust and ask them to pray with you.
A Prayer
Father, thank You for raising Jesus from the dead and begetting me again to a living hope. I confess that I have often tied my hope to a change in my circumstances, and I have been shaken when that change has not come. Lift my eyes to the inheritance You have reserved for me, and to the redemption of my body that is surely coming. I still ask You for help and healing in this present situation. But whatever comes, let my hope be anchored within the veil, where Jesus my Forerunner has entered for me. Give me patience to wait like a watchman, faithfulness to do the next right thing, and joy in the One I have not yet seen. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.