Misplaced Hope

This is an excerpt from John Eldredge's book, "Desire." He talks about the danger of placing our hope in the little kingdoms of success and pleasure, and not in the unfading and unfailing hope of heaven. This hope is tested most when our personal kingdoms begin to crumble around us.

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"Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed" (1 Peter 1:13). I read a passage like this, and I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

Fully?

We don't even set our hope partially on the life to come. Not really, not in the desires of our hearts. Heaven may be coming. Great. But it's a long way off and who really knows, so I'm getting what I can now. Our search is limited only by our finances, our options, and our morals. Those with fewer misgivings and greater financial discretion go farther with it.

For most Christians, heaven is a backup plan.

Our primary work is finding a life we can at least get a little pleasure from here. Heaven is an investment we've made, like Treasury bonds or a retirement account, which we're hoping will take care of us in the future sometime, but which we don't give much thought to at the present. It's tucked away in a drawer in the back of our minds, while we throw our immediate energies into playing the stock market.

Then God comes in like a corporate raider, ruining our plans as we watch our "stocks" go into a tailspin.

God must take away the heaven we create, or it will become our hell. You may not think your efforts to arrange for a little of what you desire are anything like heaven on earth. I certainly didn't; not, at least, in the more conscious regions of my heart. But some deep and tender part of us gets trapped there in those times and places where have had a taste of the life we long for...

Remember, we will make an idol of anything, especially a good thing. So distant now from Eden, we are desperate for life, and we come to believe that we must arrange for it as best as we can, or no one will.

Ultimately, God must thwart us to save us.