Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List is a powerful portrayal of Oskar Schindler’s work to resist the Nazi’s and save Jewish lives. This movie is filled with emotional scenes, among them is the scene in which Mr. Schindler grabs a water hose and sprays it at a boxcar filled with thirsty Jews being transported to a Nazi concentration camps. He is questioned as to why he is doing anything to provide the prisoners with hope in a truly hopeless situation.
Hope truly spurs us on, even when our situation seems dire. When our hope is in phase, it is a powerful, even beautiful thing.
As humans, we are predisposed to seek something in which to put our hope. For some it is another person, for others a political party or organization, substance or any other form of addictive behavior, and still there are those who resort to rugged self-reliance which only grows more resolute and yet more frustrated with every passing failure; simply because hope in any created thing – including self – can never completely satisfy. When our dissatisfaction is meet with a redoubled effort, our life will continue to drift further and further out of phase. Though seldom recognized as such, anything apart from God, that we look to for complete hope is, in its most basic form, an idol. In and of themselves, most of the things listed above – and many that were not – are not in and of themselves bad, destructive, or even dissatisfying. However, when they become the ultimate focus of our attention, disappointment will always be the final outcome.
Blaise Pascal spoke to this when he said, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.”
Put another way, we are only able to fully enjoy our life and all its blessings and our hope can only be completely in phase when it rests solely in God.