Have you ever experienced a nightmare where you’re being chased, and you try to run but your legs don’t seem to work? Or something bad is about to happen to you and you can’t do anything about it? Even worse, you can’t seem to wake yourself up.
This to me, is what hopelessness feels like. When everything is crashing around you, and you can’t do anything to stop it. I’m sure that each of you has had at least one defining moment of absolute hopelessness. For me, my moment came unexpectedly. It was a buildup. You could even say, it was a series of unfortunate events that lead to that moment. I never saw it coming, but God did.
It’s surreal to me to think that God knows our past, present and future. When reflecting on this, I realized that Jesus also had a defining moment of hopelessness. We can only imagine what was going through Jesus’ mind as He was preparing himself to die on the cross. Jesus reaches His moment of absolute despair and hopelessness in Matthew. As you read the story of Jesus’ death and the moments leading up to it, you can almost feel the anguish He must have felt. There was no promise of resurrection, no glimpse of hope. It’s no surprise, that Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46). At that moment, it appeared that all hope was lost, and God had really withdrawn from Him.
The way that Jesus responds to this situation shows us how we should deal with our own moments of hopelessness. In the moments leading up to His death, Jesus prayed. He knew that He was about to die, and yet He prayed that “Gods will be done” (Matthew 26:42) When we are going through our moment of hopelessness, we should cry out to God. We can ask God to change our circumstances, but we must also recognize that God has a plan and that He uses moments like this to shape us.
Think about what would have happened if God had of simply chosen to just abandon the plan for our salvation for Jesus’ peace of mind that night. God is willing to sacrifice your peace in this life, for a greater purpose. When we can recognize that there is a plan greater than us, our moment of hopelessness becomes a moment of hope.
For many of us, 2020 was a year filled with feelings of hopelessness, but there is hope for a better future. After Jesus’ death on the cross, He rose again. We can also rise out of hopelessness and into hope, just like He did.
My moment of hopelessness made me recognize my need for a Saviour. I rose up out of that moment and into a better life, as a result. While I still have moments where I lose hope, I am comforted to know that Jesus is just a prayer away. Jesus promises in Matthew 28:20
“I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”
I hope that in 2021 and the years to come, that you remember this promise. There is a loving God, there is a plan and hope that is only one prayer away.
WRITER: Kymberley McMurray