In “other” Words: Eternal Optimists

“They gave our Mas­ter a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?“
~ Mar­tin Luther ~

 

But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self. Just as man is des­tined to die once, and after that to face judg­ment, so Christ was sac­ri­ficed once to take away the sins of many peo­ple; and he will appear a sec­ond time, not to bear sin, but to bring sal­va­tion to those who are wait­ing for him.

Hebrews 9:26–28

 

Have you ever known some­one who faced mul­ti­ple tri­als and chal­lenges that were pow­er­ful enough to eas­ily crip­ple an individual’s spirit, yet remained upbeat, joy­ful and unin­ter­ested in hav­ing throw­ing a self-pity party?

I have known sev­eral folks over the years who were tested in ways that made me say, “Wow, I don’t think I could have han­dled that” or “I think I would have lost my faith if I’d been faced with that.” But they served as role mod­els, serv­ing as an exam­ple of faith and unwa­ver­ing courage to every­one they encoun­tered. They did not ask “Why me?” Not that any­one would blame or judge them for ques­tion­ing why they had to endure incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances. It is nat­ural to pon­der how rough times fit into the over­ar­ch­ing plan for our lives.

Rather, they said, “O.K., Lord, this is how it is. For what­ever rea­son, this is what I have to deal with and I know you will be by my side, so let’s get busy.”

Folks who are able to see past times of adver­sity in their lives, around obsta­cles they are required to over­come, are “eter­nal opti­mists” — and with good rea­son: Eter­nal life has been secured for us. As the above pas­sage teaches us, the sac­ri­fice only had to be made once — and for all.

Jesus wore a crown of thorns in accor­dance with the Divine’s plan for his life. But he was called upon to endure suf­fer­ing beyond our com­pre­hen­sion and die for us only once. The price of our sal­va­tion was paid in full on the cross. We will not be called upon to wear a sim­i­lar crown or make the same sac­ri­fice. Remem­ber the words to the old hymn, “What Won­drous Love is This?” It was that won­drous love that “caused the Lord of bliss to bear the dread­ful curse for my soul.”

So I’m sure that Mar­tin Luther, being a rather surly fel­low, intended to sug­gest that we are an ungrate­ful lot. And he was right — we all have times when we for­get to be grate­ful and appre­cia­tive. We get so wrapped up in what is hap­pen­ing in our lives, so obsessed with the details of our day-to-day lives, that we become com­pla­cent about our many blessings.

Worse, espe­cially here in the United States, we exhibit a sense of enti­tle­ment. We become so accus­tomed to our com­fort­able lifestyles that we come to believe that we deserve to live more com­fort­ably than most of the rest of the world does. And that sim­ply is not true. We are sim­ply for­tu­nate to be liv­ing as we do. We need to remain mind­ful of that fact and dili­gent about giv­ing thanks.

We are cor­rect to hope for a crown of roses, rather than thorns. Because, after all, a crown of roses is some­thing that an indi­vid­ual would present to his/her beloved and we are the beloved chil­dren of the Divine Cre­ator. Because of the Divine’s bound­less, lim­it­less love for us, there will be no crown of thorns worn by any of us. Rather, we are adorned in beau­ti­ful roses and have rea­son to be “eter­nal optimists”.

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