NO HOPE BUT GOD

Today I am sending you a reprint of a devotion I read in OUR DAILY BREAD, a fine daily devotional booklet produced by RBC Ministries. In their June 29 devotional, writer Cindy Hess Kasper wrote an excellent devotion which I'd like to offer this week. Here are her words:

"In his book, "Though the Valley of the Kwai," Scottish officer Ernest Gordon wrote of his years as a prisoner of war during World War Two. The 6'2" man suffered from malaria, diphtheria, typhoid, beriberi, dysentery and jungle ulcers, and the hard labor and scarcity of food quickly plunged his weight to less than 100 pounds.

The squalor of the prison hospital prompted a desperate Ernest to request to be moved to a cleaner place - the morgue. Lying in the dirt of the death house, he waited to die. But every day, a fellow prisoner came to wash his wounds and to encourage him to eat part of his own rations. As the quiet and unassuming Dusty Miller nursed Ernest back to health, he talked with the agnostic Scotsman of his own strong faith in God and showed him that - even in the midst of suffering - there is still hope.

The hope we read about in Scripture is not vague, wishy-washy optimism. Instead, biblical hope is a strong and confident expectation that what God has promised in His Word He will accomplish. Tribulation is often the catalyst that produces perseverance, character, and finally, hope.

Seventy years ago, in a brutal POW camp, Ernest Gordon learned this truth himself and later said, "Faith thrives when there is no hope but God."

"For we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us." (Romans 5:3-5)

I can add no more to those excellent Words from the Lord through St. Paul.