What is your hope?

I saw an old, familiar friend at Sal's Pub last night.

Unlike our last encounter, my highly-medicated friend was not tight lipped about his life or his lifestyle. He was relaxed and willing to talk. In hindsight, I'm really glad the Lord guided me back to the bar late in the night to counsel him on that prior occasion. A rapport was established.

As we were initially joined randomly from an old friend at the Legion Bar, I opened with a fun question--"Are you what you do?" Neither of them really had an answer. The other guy stumbled around with our identities being the product of our choices, then concluded "You are whatever you want yourself to be." I tried to convey to them that we all have an intrinsic worth that transcends our circumstances. I even used raw, painful examples--when we saw footage of the bodies of Rwandan men, women, and children choking rivers, we weren't grieving because of what they did, but because of who they are. Both friends caught on...a bit.

The other guy left and I was left with my initial friend. We chatted casually for a few--he mentioned that he missed not having "official" gatherings of our group the past couple of months--and then he summed up his life since I last saw him in four words: My mom has cancer.

After expressing my initial grief at what he just told me, I started asking the "What?" questions: What type of cancer does she have? What comes next? Basic info. Next, the "Who?" questions: Who is still living with her? Who is going with her to her appointments? (I offered.) Who is supporting her? Who is supporting you? Finally, the "How?" questions: How is she doing? How are you doing?

Throughout this, I am trying to focus on listening to his answers and allowing to express himself fully. When I contribute, I try to do so by asking questions and affirming his grief. I use my prior knowledge of him--medications, disorders, etc.--to convey additional sympathy--"I know your life already seemed a bit out of control. I bet it feels like chaos to see one of your few pillars in life shaken like this..."

 At times like this, one has to choose what it is really important to say. The person next to you likely has very little bandwidth to comprehend anything you say, especially if it sounds trite. "So what is your hope in all of this?" I ask. "That the prognosis would be good and my mother would recover," he responded, matter-of-fact.

I realize my question is too vague and that assumes a religious conception of hope, which is increasingly rare to come by. "I hope she does as well, but with all due respect (and I switch to generalizations to keep from getting to personal), we all will die someday. In a since, we are each dying a bit every day. With your struggles, you know this as well as anybody. You know that I am a Christian and what my hope is when dealing with death. What is your hope is dealing with death?"

"My hope is that I will have friends to support me." At that point, I didn't press any further. These conversations are like relationships leading toward marriage--you don't push to quickly nor drag your feet. By God's grace, you try to use wisdom to discern the person and the situation.

I did find his response depressing. He as few loving relationships in his life, and love has been a pretty brutal concept for him over the course of his life. To invest his hopes concerning death in temporal friendships speaks more to his loneliness than his hope. My hope is that this unsettling topic drives to despair--not of life, but of himself. The questions now lay before him as a testimony: Will he take death seriously and seek out genuine hope where it may be found?

This question should never be treated lightly, for your life hinges upon it: What is your hope?

"Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." (Romans 5:1-5)