We Had Hoped
When God Disappoints You
Their dust-covered feet carried them along the road out of Jerusalem. They had followed Jesus for some time. They had seen his miracles and heard his teaching. But three days ago, he was crucified. And just today, some of his followers found his tomb empty and said an angel of the Lord told them that Jesus was alive. How could they begin to make sense of the events of the last three days?
As they walked along the road, another man joined them. They were clearly burdened and bewildered. Overhearing their conversation, he asked them, “What are you discussing so intently?”
The man’s question stopped them in their tracks. They stood still, staring at him—their eyes conveying all they had witnessed. So one of them began telling him about Jesus, the prophet who did powerful miracles and was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people.
But their religious leaders handed him over to be crucified three days ago.
“We had hoped,” one of the men concluded, “that he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel” (Luke 24:21).
I’ve read that story many times. But as the priest read our gospel passage from Luke 24 a few months ago, one phrase resounded: “We had hoped.” I knew I was supposed to linger there for a while. They are words laden with disappointment, spoken by someone wrestling to reconcile their hopes with their reality.
The disciples had hoped Jesus was the one God had promised to send, the one who would deliver them from Roman oppression. But events weren’t playing out the way they expected. Jesus had been crucified, and their hope lay buried in the belly of a dark tomb.
It could be said that faith is knowing God can; hope is believing God will. Hope is rooted in an expectation or belief in the fulfillment of something desired.¹ It keeps us scanning the horizon and moving forward. John Calvin put it well when he wrote,
“Faith believes that God is true; hope expects that in due season he will manifest his truth. Faith believes that he is our Father; hope expects that he will always act the part of a Father towards us. Faith believes that eternal life has been given to us; hope expects that it will one day be revealed. Faith is the foundation on which hope rests; hope nourishes and sustains faith.”²
But hope is a double-edged sword because we follow a God who does not conform to our expectations and whose plans do not always align with our hopes. As the psalmist said, our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases (Psalm 115:3).
Hope is a risky endeavor because it exposes you to disappointment, not just with life’s circumstances but with God himself. In his book, Human, All Too Human, atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called hope the worst of all evils, because it prolongs man's torments (sec. 6, aph. 71).
We’ve all experienced times of unrelenting disappointment when life isn’t turning out the way we hoped–the darkness of depression or anxiety that won’t lift, relational challenges we can’t overcome no matter how hard we try, financial troubles that constantly loom like a dark cloud, or dreams that have slowly withered away with time.
Hope leaves us vulnerable to heartache. How we navigate that vulnerability varies. Sometimes we may attempt to protect ourselves from feeling vulnerable by rejecting our desire, assuming any desire to be sinful or idolatrous. Other times we might hyperspiritualize, convincing ourselves we truly only want God’s will. Or we may try to avoid disappointment by expecting the worst, in case things don’t turn out as we hoped. I’ve done all of the above and often to my own detriment.
But is the answer to avoiding disappointment to abandon hope? On the contrary, Jürgen Moltmann warns us that to live without hope is like no longer living. He goes on to say, “Hell is hopelessness, and it is not for nothing that at the entrance to Dante’s hell there stand the words: ‘Abandon hope, all ye who enter here’” (Theology of Hope).
To live with hope opens us to heartache, but to live without it is hell. As human beings living in a broken world, we need hope. True hope is neither naive nor reserved for the weak or the passive. It isn’t just a positive attitude or a Pollyanna-type naivete.
It means, as G.K. Chesterton once wrote, that we hope precisely when things are hopeless. “As long as matters are really hopeful, hope is a mere flattery or platitude; it is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all.”³
To hope is daring and deliberate and defiant. It’s our way of resisting the darkness, of not letting it steal things like joy and wonder or even experiencing God’s consolation in our sorrow.
The Scripture provides us with many examples of those with great faith who not only believed God could help them but dared to hope that he would. The woman who pressed through the crowd, just to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, hoping he would heal her from 13 years of bleeding (Mark 5:25-34). Blind Bartimaeus who cried out over the crowd, hoping Jesus would restore his sight (Mark 10:46-52). The Roman centurion who sought Jesus, hoping he would heal his servant (Luke 7:1–10). And all of those in Hebrews 11, known as the “Faith Hall of Fame,” who believed God and saw him work powerfully in their lives.
All of these people experienced a miracle. God answered their prayers with a definitive yes! But Scripture also provides us with examples of those whose faith was no less great, who sought the Lord in hope, but who did not receive the same answer.
The Apostle Paul suffered greatly from what he called a thorn in his side. Whether this was a physical ailment or some other form of suffering, he pleaded with the Lord three times for it to be taken from him. But rather than removing the thorn, the Lord said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:1-10).
There are the men and women of Hebrews 11 who, unlike the others in the passage, did not experience God’s immediate intervention. Instead, they were tortured, flogged, chained, imprisoned, stoned, and killed. They were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised (Hebrews 11:35b-40 NIV).
And then there is Jesus, whose faith was perfect. He pleaded with God in the Garden of Gethsemane three times for another way to accomplish salvation for humanity, and yet God did not intervene (Matthew 26:36-46).
All of these men and women believed God could do all they asked of him. All of them hoped God would resolve their suffering. All were commended for their faith. But only some of them received what they hoped for, and some didn’t.
So what are we to do? How do we continue to hope when God may say no? What does it look like to hope on this side of Eden?
Hope lives in the present without losing sight of the future.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus had legitimate concerns over their present-day circumstances. They were under Roman occupation. Life was hard. They hoped God would free them. And he would.
God was present with them and at work in and through their circumstances, but the disciples were swept up in an epic story unfolding in the heavenly realms—one they weren’t privy to, with plot twists and mysteries too great for them to grasp. He was working toward a greater future and facilitating their ultimate freedom from all sin and suffering.
Hope scans not only the path you’re on, but the horizon as well. We can and should hope for things that are affecting us, the people we love, and our world. We should pray for God to move on our behalf. Jesus did, so did Paul. We should act in faith and pursue our options. But we do all of that while recognizing that this world is not ultimately our home. Our predecessors in the faith did not receive what God promised, but they “saw it all from a distance and welcomed it” (Hebrews 11:13). This is how they held on to their ultimate hope and what kept them moving forward in faith despite disappointment.
Maybe this feels too sanitized or too easily prescribed. But it is far from it. We can wholeheartedly believe in our future hope even as we experience the heartache of what is. God does not require us to deny our hopes or the grief we feel when they do not materialize. Jesus agonized in the garden, hoping and praying for another way. He was able to endure that agony because he had his eyes on future joy—one that includes us (Hebrews 12:2).
Keep putting one foot in front of the other—praying, hoping, pursuing, and working. Choose to hope, even when life has gutted you. Believe the Lord is for you and that your present circumstances are not an indication of his faithfulness to you and love for you. Christ is. There is greater joy to come. Don’t lose sight of the horizon.
But sometimes there are seasons when you can no longer hold on to hope. You need people to hold you up. In Mark 2, a paralyzed man couldn’t get to Jesus on his own. So his friends carried him and lowered him through a hole in the roof to Jesus (vv. 1-5). When you don’t have the strength to hope anymore, let others carry you to Jesus—holding you up and loaning you their hope—until you can once again stand on your own two feet.
Hope does not eliminate grief.
I am currently looking at the ruins of an old church building surrounded by a graveyard–a picture of crumbled hopes that lay buried in the ground. It is a picture that death comes for us all. That life ends. That grief is inescapable. That the things we build eventually crumble and decay. That nothing lasts forever.
True hope is inescapably connected to grief. Processing grief with God helps us resist resentment against God. For that, God has given us the gift of lament. It’s his invitation to us to grieve over all that death has stolen—dreams, relationships, sleep, healing, peace—and to experience his comfort and care.
The psalmists provide us many examples of what it looks like to wholeheartedly bring our grief—even our anger—to God, raw and unfiltered. They wrestle with God and the big questions that surround our disappointment with him:
Where are you?
Why are you silent?
Why aren’t you doing anything?
Have you forgotten me?
Have you rejected me?
When will you come to my aid?
We will grieve, but Paul reminds us that we do not grieve as those without hope. Paul wrote those words to the Thessalonians about those who had died. But death, Paul said, does not get the final word. The dead in Christ will live again. And when that happens, we will be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 5:13-19).
If you are disappointed with God, bring those disappointments to him. Tell him about your hopes and heartache.
Surrender is not relinquishment of hope.
Jesus pleaded with the Father three times. But each time, he concluded his prayer with “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” Did Jesus, in his humanity, hope that another way was possible? It seems so. But he was willing to surrender his hopes for God’s greater plan and to trust God with the details, even when the road ahead would be excruciating.
Surrender is different from resignation. Resignation is abandoning hope; surrender is entrusting hope. Resignation looks to our circumstances; surrender looks to our God.
In surrender, we hope, pray, and even work for specific outcomes, but we hold them with open hands, entrusting them to the Lord. We can do this because, despite our circumstances, we believe the Lord is for us. And he has shown us that most clearly in Christ. God did not rescue Christ from his suffering so that he might one day rescue us from ours.
The disciples shuffled along the dusty road to Emmaus, disappointed and disillusioned. When Jesus showed up and walked alongside them, they didn’t recognize him. Whether they were blinded by grief or Jesus prevented them from recognizing him, we don’t know. But hope enfleshed was in their midst. And when he appeared, he invited them to name their sorrows, to tell him of their disappointment (Luke 24:17-19).
But he doesn’t let them stay there. He brings them forward in the story, reminding them of all the Scriptures prophesied and explaining the necessity of his suffering before the realization of his glory. He grounded their hope not in their current circumstances but in his story—one that brought death and left real scars, but also brought resurrection and the promise of a new heaven and new earth, where there is no more death, no more sorrow, no more tears.
Even in the resurrection, Jesus’ scars remain. We, too, will live through this life bearing the scars of unrealized hopes. Many will leave a permanent mark, and that mark gets carried into glory rather than erased by it. But just as Jesus invited the disciples on the road to Emmaus to look at their scars in light of his future promises, he is inviting us to do the same.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).”
¹ Paul K. McAlister, “Hope,” in Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1988), 996.
² John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 1997).
³ Gilbert K. Chesterton, Heretics (New York: John Lane, 1919), 119.
Engage the Scripture
Read Romans 5:3-5. Write down the progression Paul lays out in suffering. What does he say about hope? What would it look like to allow this process to unfold in you in times of unrealized hopes?
Read Psalm 42. The psalmist holds both grief and hope together. How does the psalmist grieve with God in this psalm? Write down the phrases or words that stand out. How does he fight for hope? What would it look like to incorporate both grief and hope in your own prayers?
Explore Your Story
Where in your life right now would you say, “I had hoped...”? What did you expect God to do, and what actually happened instead? What was your response? What would it look like next time to carry that to God in lament?
When it comes to hope, which do you struggle with more:
Living in the present without losing sight of the future
Fighting to believe God is good and for you, despite evidence to the contrary
Grieving with hope
Surrendering and entrusting your hope to God
What is it about that particular struggle that feels hardest for you specifically?
3. The article describes ways we avoid feeling vulnerable to hope: rejecting our desires as sinful, hyperspiritualizing and convincing ourselves we only want God’s will, or expecting the worst so we won’t be disappointed. What are the ways you attempt to avoid being vulnerable and disappointed?
Encounter the Savior
1. In Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for God to provide another way for salvation to occur, but God did not. How does it impact you to know that Jesus also prayed for something that he did not receive? What was the outcome of Jesus’ unanswered prayer in the end? How does that change your perspective on how God has handled your own circumstances?
In the Luke 22 passage, Jesus walked alongside the disciples on the road to Emmaus, but they did not recognize him until much later. Where might Jesus have been present with you in your own disappointments that you did not recognize it at the time?
Experience shalom
Find a quiet space. Hold your hands in your lap, palms closed into a loose fist. Now name one specific hope you are carrying. Then physically release it by opening your hands. Sit in that open-handed posture for a few minutes, breathing slowly, repeating a short prayer of surrender (e.g., "Not my will, but yours"). Let the physical motion of releasing and opening your hands be a way of practicing surrender without resignation — still hoping, still open, but no longer gripping.
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