Once Hope Gets in your Blood

NCIS is one of my favorite television shows. The characters and their relationships have always been consistently entertaining to me. As I have discussed in an earlier post, I actually played catch with Mark Harmon when we were both about 10 years old. He was quite an athlete even then and also are very nice young man.

I recently watched a rerun of an episode from Season 16, Episode 19. In what I believe were the last two scenes in the episode, Gibbs (Mark Harmon’s character) reveals that being human involves feelings (which is against Rule 10 and against all for which he has fought his entire life) and a land lady says to Ellie (one of the agents on Gibb’s team), “The funny thing about Hope, once she gets into your blood, she never leaves you.”

Ever since I heard that quote I have not been able stop thinking about it. I don’t generally go to NCIS for spiritual or philosophical insight, but the more I pondered the land lady’s wisdom, the more I was sure there was a deep, even eternal truth revealed through it. It has been said that “life is in the blood.” That is to say that physical life is in the blood. The oxygen we need flows through the blood. The nutrients we need flow through the blood. Without blood we are physically dead.

But there is something more than physical life. There is real life. Real life is life with a purpose. Real life is life with contentment. Real life is life filled with rest and peace. Real life focuses outside of itself. Hope is to real life as blood is to physical life. Hope is the source of real life and a “Funny thing about Hope. once she gets into your blood, she never leaves.”

A few days from now I will celebrate my 69th birthday. For well over half of my life I totally misunderstood Hope and I thought the source of real life was hard work, diligence, winning, making people happy, having and making more money, being liked, being appreciated, getting ahead, being in power, having stuff, and controlling people and events. I wore myself out trying to find what I thought was real life – happiness.

I finally came to the end of myself. I exhausted all of my sources of fulfillment. Competing and winning at sports didn’t do it. Teaching and coaching didn’t do it. Making and spending money didn’t do it. Being the boss didn’t do it. Developing subdivisions, shopping centers and medical facilities didn’t do it. Happiness turned out to be an illusion because happiness is based on “haps” and a “hap” is a chance event over which you have no control. I couldn’t work or play hard enough to get all of my “haps” lined up just like I wanted them to be. I finally collapsed.

What I needed wasn’t happiness. What I needed was Hope. And I didn’t even know what Hope was, much less know that I needed it or where to look for it. Amazingly, I was a Christian and I thought my faith was just not strong enough. Just like I had always done, I thought the way to dig out from the bottom of the pit was to try harder. If only I had more faith everything would be better. My pit only became deeper and darker.

Then one day I heard that Hope didn’t mean, “I hope the Nationals win!” That kind of “hope” is just another “hap”, a chance event over which I have no control. To say, “I hope the Nationals win!” is to use “hope” to say that if everything would go as I wish it would go, in order for me to be happy, the Nationals would win. Real Hope, however, at its essence means, “Confident expectation of good.” It means that I know that I know that I know. I now had a elementary understanding of the concept of Hope but I had no idea where to find it.

In the Bible, in Romans Chapter 4:18, I read, “In hope, he believed against hope……” and for the first time I understood that this passage about Abraham, the father of all three great world faiths (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) contrasts the two uses of the Word hope. What it says is that Abraham in confident expectation of good (Hope) believed in the face of the evidence (hope as in wish) and God called it faith. Now if Hope preceded faith what if anything preceded Hope?

In 1Corinthians 13:1-12, the Apostle Paul defines and describes Love (Agape). He convinces us that Love can only come from God, is initiated by God and in fact is God. The only way we can ever know Love, be Loved or Love ourselves or another is to receive the revelation and the reality of Love from God. Agape Love is always other looking. God is Love.

1Corinthians 13:13, the final verse of Chapter 13 (The Love Chapter) taught me the source of Hope. It says, “Now these three remain, Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.” Because I had become convinced that Hope came before Faith I now understood this passage. Love precedes and begets Hope just as Hope precedes and begets Faith. I had been trying to well up Faith when what I needed was to know the Love of God. Once I knew the unconditional Love of God, revealed to us through the sacrificial Love of Jesus, I was filled with Hope. Love allowed me to Love and Hope allowed me to take my eyes off of myself and to serve others because I now had Faith in God knowing that He loved me and promised good for me because I am his child.

In Galatians 5:22, we read, “Now the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.” Once again, Love is the precedent and Hope (Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness) comes before Faithfulness and Self Control. Knowing and receiving the Love of God fills us with Hope and Hope is the Blood flowing through and enlivening a Heart of Faith. Ezekiel 36:26, “I will remove yourself heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” “The funny thing about Hope, once she gets into your blood, she never leaves you.”