Without God, Without Hope

Doctors increasingly report patients with no physical illness only a crushing sense that they have “nothing to live for.” Wealth, travel, and social status offer them no meaning because, as Scripture says, they are “without God” and therefore “having no hope.” Their despair echoes the cynicism of Lord Keynes, who famously shrugged, “In the long run, we are all dead.” But the apostle Paul speaks from an entirely different world: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” In Christ, both life and death overflow with purpose, for God makes all things work together for good to those who love Him. Hopelessness is ultimately a choice a refusal to acknowledge the living God. And even Christians can foolishly lapse into self-pity, forgetting the immense riches they possess in Christ. To walk with God is to walk in hope and to live like it.