Canter Bridge

Were Paul the misanthropic curmudgeon he is often taken for, we would not have lines like this:

In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory.

People bogged down in what is wrong—or will be if so-and-so is left to run things—do not make statements like this. These words and the lines that surround them are full to bursting with hope for those whom ‘the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ has called. Indeed they speak about placing hope in Christ so that Paul and the Ephesians might grow into the rather large stature that it is their vocation to realize.

Although perhaps not visible at a quick read, Paul’s sentiment is categorically distinct from that of pessimists, curmudgeons, and party poopers of every variety. It is a profoundly rooted narrative of expectation. The rooting is not in human progress per se, far from it. Rather, Paul leans upon his notion of a mystery that has been lately revealed to sketch out a career for humanity-in-Christ that is astounding in its trajectory. Paul might sense that he is delineating a recovery of what was lost in the tragedy of Prototypal Man. Regardless, he has great expectations.

The biblical alternative to pessimism is not optimism, a mediocre habit of mind whose highest affirmation is that ‘things will turn out all right’. Things have a way of not accommodating such sunny frivolity.

Rather, the biblical alternative to pessimism is hope. Hope understands in its inarticulate core—though it is sometimes capable of fine expression in the end—that a God intent on blessing is doing something even here, even now, hidden behind the blur of cirumstances and the existential fog of war.

Paul hopes and urges his Ephesian readers to do the same.

Only by a hopeful temperament, better still by a hopeful habit of mind that does come easy but that once learned provides life with a higher and firmer foothold, can Paul’s readers endeavor to apprehend and then to live in the direction of this great expectation.

Paul writes that he prays for his readers as they find themselves enmeshed in this reeingineering of the soul.

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

Paul has glimpsed something of which he can no longer take the measure. Fortunate the eyes.