Reflections On HopeSýnishorn

War. Famine. Plague. Throughout history these threats loomed large over people and nations. In the absence of any real mastery over their destinies, people could only choose between fate and hope.

War, famine and plague were ever-present in the Old Testament and were often seen as agents of God’s judgement. Zephaniah’s prophesied cataclysm in Zephenia 3, almost certain to be at the hands of a nearby warring nation, would not come as a surprise to the prophet’s temple listeners. That was the way things generally went in 600BC. It would have been easy to be a fatalist!

In a startling change of tack, though, Zephaniah ends his sermon by telling his listeners that there is still room to hope. Zephaniah’s soaring (and surprising) song of joy reminded his listeners that it is in God’s hands that our destinies ultimately lie. God is for us, not against us!

Today we face different threats and fears, as if our controlling the major threats has opened the way for a myriad of more subtle and complex threats that don’t so readily take our lives, but certainly rob us of life in all its fullness! So what then of hope?

As Christians we have God’s promise, as God promised Zephaniah’s listeners, that God continues to be for us and not against us! As Christians we live as those who can see beyond the visible and the immediate. We live as those who have ‘read the last page of the book’ and know that our story ends well.