Hopeful Babies

Last night I got together with a group of guys who are reading through C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. We meet at a pub here in town, drink beer, smoke pipes, and talk about theology.) I'm not sure who that throws off more, the non-Christians who see us do it, or the Christians who think there's a good chance we could be going to hell because we're doing it.) At any rate, part of last night's reading included a chapter on hope. Here's what Lewis says about it

The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, then; is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.'

Here's the thing I love about this paragraph: the certainty with which he talks about things hoped for. Food, swimming, sex, these are all things that are real, there is potential, real potential that the hope can be met. It's not the same kind of hope that says, "I hope/wish/desire to fly like Superman." That's not hope, it's fantasy. It can't really be hope because, the entire time you're saying it, in the back of your mind you know it cannot come true. It can't be, and hope was made for things that are certain. Christians hope for Heaven, they hope for an end to suffering and death and pain and sin, and when we talk about hoping for these things and think and pray with hope about these things, it should be with the idea that they'll actually happen. That it's as real as the potential for a baby to get food that's crying. Now, a lot has to happen for that baby to get the food and much depends on forces outside the baby. All he can really do is cry. And maybe for us, maybe that's what we should do as well, keep crying. Crying because the desire is real. Crying because the pain is great. Crying because we are unhappy. But also crying because we know our crying can actually be silenced and our hope come to sight, becuase we know that what we desire is real.