Week One: Belonging
What is our only hope in life and death?
What is our only hope in life and death?
That we are not our own but belong, body and soul, both in life and death, to God and to our Savior Jesus Christ.
hope (n.)
late Old English hopa “confidence in the future,” especially "God or Christ as a basis for hope.” From c. 1200 as "expectation of something desired;" also "trust, confidence; wishful desire;" late 14c. as "thing hoped for," also "grounds or basis for hope."
Our current available etymological origins for the word hope contains within it a reference to Christ God.
As a self-professed word nerd, I find that astonishing.
The entry for hope also points us to the word confidence.
Confidence comes from the Latin roots com and fidere, which means “with” and “trust.”
And trust comes from the Proto Indo-European root deru, meaning "be firm, solid, steadfast."
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
Matthew 7:24-27
Like the foolish man in the Parable of the Wise and the Foolish Builders who chose to build his house upon the sand, basing my life upon and placing my trust in the created things of this world, in place of God my Creator, anchors me into precarious terrain.
It is in Christ Jesus that I am tasked to place my hope, for this life and for the life to come.
It is by faith in Christ Jesus that I uncover what it means to live with confidence, fastened to a firm, solid, and steadfast foundation.
But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him.
- Jeremiah 17:7
The word belong in modern contexts means “to be the property of.”
But the word has its etymological origins in the Proto Indo-European roots bheue, meaning "to be, exist, grow," and dlonghos, meaning “having a great extent” and “lasting.”
In essence, to belong, when considered in the context of its etymology, invites us to gaze in the direction of that which sustains our continued being and becoming, to place our eyes on the fount of our steadfast existence, to be with and grow alongside what is extensive and lasting.
To belong is to be fully known and fully loved.
And there is no one who knows me and loves me like God does.
With eyes on the Source of all love, true belonging reveals itself.
Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
- 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 NLT
Belonging, in the context of this catechism, also points me to the payment Jesus Christ delivered on the cross for my eternal redemption.
I belong to God because of the Son’s sacrifice, in His choice to willfully experience the most brutal death possible and lay down His life for me.
When I finally allowed myself to feel and sit with the weight of the love required for such an act, it absolutely took my breath away.
I hand myself over to belong as a servant of God through my continual and willful confession of faith in Jesus’ sinless life, sacrificial death, miraculous resurrection, and glorious ascension.
When I recognized Jesus as both a divine person of God and a real human being, I began to intimately relate with Him in a way I’d never been able to before.
It is in humbly falling to my knees in admittance of my brokenness and in accepting my need for pardon that I began to see the light of emancipation from this state of lostness and notice the possibility of kinship with my Creator.
By admitting the truth of my utter inability to save myself, I suddenly discovered myself available for salvation.
I started to taste the deep, abiding security of what it means to truly belong when I began to diligently revoke my faith from the fleeting things of this world and place that misplaced allegiance back in the hands of God.
Safeness no longer means seeking to feel good but trusting that all goodness emerges from God.
In surrendering my will and making myself available to be an instrument of God’s will by daily “taking up my cross” and committing myself to small continual acts of selflessness that reflect His sacrificial love, I begin to taste the promise of Kingdom liberation.
For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
- 1 Timothy 4:10