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He is Our Anchor of Hope, an extract from Broken by Fear, Anchored in Hope
This week is Mental Health Awareness Week and we're sharing an extract from Rob Merchant's upcoming book: Broken by Fear, Anchored in Hope. Drawing on his own experience, Rob shows how healing starts when we acknowledge and accept our vulnerability. Knowing our place before God and surrendering wholly to Christ, we can discover forgiveness and always find hope. This extract draws on the feeling of hope.
It is sometimes said that there are two types of people in the world: people who, when they see a glass half filled with water, see it either as half full or half empty. I’d like to add a third category, because I’m married to someone who not only sees the glass as half full, but overflowing, bursting, such is her level of optimism. My wife, however, would want to add a fourth category of person. You see, I’m a ‘There is no glass’ person. I don’t see it as half empty, I see the disaster of what little water there is running away with nothing to hold it or protect it. You’d think we’d cancel each other out, but we don’t. The combination of my post-traumatic stress disorder and long-term mental health means that I’m hyper-vigilant. I’m hyper-vigilant to the unfolding disaster that is continually about to happen before me, which makes hope rather tricky to see or imagine. However, the upside of hyper-vigilance is that I’m never knowingly under- packed and my wife knows that everything (everything) we need will always be in the suitcase for a holiday.
But according to the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, we have a promise that God has made, a promise God swore by himself, a promise that God has fulfilled in Jesus, who has entered the inner sanctuary, behind the curtain: ‘We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure’ (Hebrews 6.19a). Jesus is our anchor of hope. He is the fulfilment of the Father’s love, firm and secure for all eternity; nothing in all creation can separate us from his extraordinary love. For a man who cannot see the half-full glass, knowing there is hope that despair can never overcome, never suck dry, is vital. Like the sun above us, hope in Jesus, our anchor of hope, is constant, vital, life-giving, warming to the very soul, and always present regardless of whether or not we can see it.
That image of the hope of Christ like the constancy of the sun above is one I first heard at a conference, and it has stayed with me ever since. A Spanish psychologist, who was speaking at a major Christian conference, described his flight from Spain to the UK. It had been a wet and windy day when his plane took off from Madrid Airport. Clouds covered the sky and everything was dull; there was no sun- shine to be seen or felt. He described the plane taking off, buffeted by wind and rain as it climbed up into the clouds where all vision was lost; the only thing he could see from the plane’s windows was grey cotton wool of rain clouds. It was then that it happened. He described how suddenly the plane left the enveloping hold of the clouds and burst into the sunshine. As the plane climbed higher to reach its cruising altitude, the vivid blue sky became clear and the sun shone brightly. And then he realized: the sun had been shining all along. The storm clouds that had covered his view of the sun were temporary, but the sun’s warmth and radiance were permanent, constant, ever present. And so he encouraged us never to lose hope of the constant love of Jesus, because he is always present, always loving, always constant. The storm clouds of life may blow across, blocking our vision, buffeting our lives, but the Son of God is still radiant.
Time and again, as depression and anxiety have blown across, blocking my ability to see or feel the warmth of Jesus, I have reminded myself to trust in the truth that he is still there, he is our anchor of hope, the clouds will pass, they always do, and I will see his glory once more.
Drawing on his own experience, Rob shows how healing starts when we acknowledge and accept our vulnerability. Knowing our place before God and surrendering wholly to Christ, we can discover forgiveness and always find hope.
Learn more >
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