When the World Crumbles is Hope Left?

Hearing crying and slamming on the door, I knock on the bathroom door and ask if she is okay. She comes out crying and asks how could someone go on with a lie for two years and mess with her emotions in such a way. As I try to hug her tears away she goes on about how he took everything from her, since they shared their lives together all this time and now he says he was a fake. She asks me:

"How am I suppose to have hope?"

I couldn't give an answer to her. At least not on that made sense at the time. I know my hope is in Christ I do not understand how there is any hope in any other thing. That is not something I could tell someone who had disbelief in God. The best secular answer I could come up with was live today and hope tomorrow is better. That is still very depressing when given thought to for a long time. God had something for me the next day at church. Pastor Nate (http://naterhoads.wordpress.com/author/naterhoads/) had a message from Ecclesiastes. It taught me of this same message that life is very hard, bleak and even with faith life is still confusing. I left some to my own thoughts but never the less Pastor Nate teaches from a heart after God.

Ecclesiastes 1:1-111 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 "Meaningless! Meaningless!"
says the Teacher.
"Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless."

3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?

4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.

5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.

6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.

7 All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again.

8 All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.

9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there anything of which one can say,
"Look! This is something new"?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.

11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.

How are we suppose to go on when everything becomes routine, the same, mundane, and boring? We look for something new on the horizon but it just leads us back to the same discontent we had before. Even if we find love, have a family or whatever, are we remembered? I can honestly say that my ancestors are not something on my mind usually. Is that remembrance that even my offspring's offspring will not even remember me and of all the history books we read, how many millions were just recorded as a statistic in death or population? Is that anyway we want to be remembered? If we have trouble understanding love and human emotions toward each other as she had then how are we suppose to have faith in even each other in this life? This is very bleak to have this pessimistic view. She even said with all this hurt she tried to find sources to have her stop thinking about him or thinking in this way mentioned. Is it nothing short of what this says:

"All streams flow into the sea,
yet the sea is never full.
To the place the streams come from,
there they return again."

We are like a sea, always needing to be filled with something constantly. The streams are like the silencers we put on life trying to stop us from thinking in that depressing mood. In my life that stream is obvious sometimes, I would say it was upgrading my car, farming achievements in some game, savings, education, seeking a love life, and friends. Do we always leave satisfied from anything we do? I know I do but the victory does not last long in my accomplishments. It comes down to I won't be remembered, and just forgotten. The other reason I highlight this verse of Streams flowing into the Sea because it also reminds me of a favorite passage in which Jesus talks to a Samaritan lady.

John 4:13-20 "Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

15The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water."

16He told her, "Go, call your husband and come back."

17"I have no husband," she replied.

Jesus said to her, "You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true."

19"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.

This story also relates back to the girl's story in a way about wanting love and hope. I still can't answer her original question clearly in a secular matter instead I can only offer this. Jesus was not scared to search our hearts. When we make friends we usually stay safe asking education, career, family, friends, and stuff. Jesus talks to us in a different way. He might come up and ask what are we struggling with or directly confront our fears. Its hard for us to understand how he did not do this in judgement because thats all we use to measure each other.

Jesus spoke directly to this woman's needs, that being the feeling of being loved. She had 5 husbands yet was living with a new guy whom she was not married too. Those past husband and current men could be compared to being the streams into her sea yet never fulfilling what she was really seeking in life. Yet Jesus comes now as a promise to be really what she is seeking, and to think she was probably joking when she said, "Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." That kind of water is the Amazing Love and Hope that can only come from the creator. An encounter with Jesus is something that penetrates to the deepest part of our soul, because to him there is no way to "measure up" or judge to a standard. Our schooling, possessions, friends, family, or career does not make us who we are deep down. Jesus is Hope for something better whether we understand it now or not.