Somehow I ran across a post on social media in a group for “unhinged” homeschool moms. The atheist poster was lamenting that another child told her six year old that there is a Heaven. She said her child doesn’t need an “eternal security blanket” because “his life is so wonderfully built for his well-being that he has nothing to seek eternal comfort from.” When I saw her words I was struck by how pitifully inexperienced this woman is in some of the harder realities of life, and I wondered how long she might be able to maintain the illusion that she has this much power over her child’s existence. I don’t know when I’ve seen a more naive view of motherhood or a more fragile hold on what hope actually looks like.
I wonder what will happen to this mother when her child is confronted with the inevitable difficulties of being a broken human being in a broken world. How will she reconcile her enlightened ways of proudly rejecting the crutch of eternal hope with the soul-crushing truth that her son will struggle, get sick, get hurt, and will desperately need his mother to provide some real truth to soothe his mind and heart? Will she continue to laugh at those of us who have hope? Will she be forced to turn to the God she is so convinced isn’t there? I pray that she will be.
As a mother with four children at vastly different phases of life, I can confirm one truth: raising kids in our current world is complicated and scary. I have real fears about it, and am under no illusions that as long as I am trying my hardest, no harm or bad thinking or tragedy or sorrow will touch my kids. When I saw that frustrated mom’s comments, all I could think is that she has many of the same fears and worries that I do (that all moms do), but she was trying so very hard to pretend that she has it all under control and does NOT need the help of her son’s little six year old friend with child-like faith or her God. That is her heart of stone talking, and I pray that God transforms it.
Yet, seeing this post made me so very grateful for the hope that God placed inside of me. It was none of my doing. I was just a rebellious and stony-hearted as that annoyed mom before He changed me and showed me what real hope looks like. What a relief it is, knowing that I don’t have to delicately and desperately try to manipulate all the circumstances of my kids’ lives so that they don’t feel a need for God, knowing that every hardship, every tear, every moment of suffering in this world has an answer in Jesus Christ, knowing that real, true, actual hope is available to me, to my kids, and to that worked up atheist who is shaking her fist at God. I don’t have one iota of control of what happens in the future. But I have endless amounts of hope in the person of Jesus.
I once heard an extremely old country preacher speak on hope from the pulpit. He had lived a long life and had had enough sorrowful things happen to know just how little control he had over his future. “But I have hope, ” he said. “And when you have hope, you have a lot.” I have never forgotten that phrase. When you have hope, you have a lot. When I think of that dear mother, so without hope, placing her trust in all of the ways that she thinks she can control her son’s experience in this world, my heart swells with compassion for her. Without hope, we are all so very poor. With it, we’re rich beyond comprehension. I don’t know what will happen in my family’s life. I don’t know my children will yet face in this harsh and dark world. But I know what the Light looks like, and I know He isn’t letting go of their hands or mine.
Things will go badly and hard times will come. But when you’ve got hope, you’ve got a lot. I want to see my children cling to the truths that bolster that hope: God is real. He is good. He is ever-present. He is love. He is perfect. And He is their only hope. I pray that God will open the eyes and soften the heart of an upset little atheist mom out there, because trouble is coming for her child in this life, and right now that mom, with all her plans and all her good intentions, is penniless, and she doesn’t even know it. By the time her son is desperate for Truth and real answers, I pray that she has all the riches of hope to hand to him, with great joy.
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