Friends: When ill winds blow in our culture, who can we trust? Bob

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Spirituality Column #991

November 11, 2025

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gales of November

By Bob Walters

 “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” - Psalm 12:2

My greatest comfort as a Christian, despite my disquietude with the world – especially at this moment in history with socialist domestic elections, failed national legislative agendas, ridiculously skewed media narratives, murderous international persecutions of the faithful, and irresolvable wars – is knowing I can trust Jesus.

“God is in control.” Really? As a matter of fact, yes. What we are seeing in these contemporary November political storms writ large is the freedom God has given man to screw up the dominion He bequeathed to us, i.e., the Earth. God rules; we rebel.

God has a plan for our salvation, yes; it is faith in Jesus Christ. We are thus delivered eternally from our sins, yet mired in our temporal human desire – yea, surely our inability – to supplant God’s simple truths of love and grace by exerting our fallen nature of pride, greed, lust for earthly power, and rejection of our need for God.

Satan has got us pretty good at the moment; there appears nowhere to turn.

So, we turn away from God? Blame God? Double down on our own fallen, human mistakes and insist we can cobble together a better, more equitable, more just life on Earth if we seek freedom not in Christ but in our own truth? That’s the error of the world; that’s Satan. His goal is to destroy God’s glory and image; i.e., us.

We needn’t replay the particulars of the fall of mankind we see in Genesis 3, nor is there space here to catalogue the manifold foibles of humanity revealed throughout scripture.  In the here and now, the plenipotential cacophony of human communication whether the Internet, news media, politicians, academia, online screeds, or violence in the streets, assaults our senses daily and easily matches the chaos of the Bible.

What’s missing?  The hope of the Bible.  My first time through the Old Testament, or any part of the Bible, well into my adulthood, left me shaken with the images of violence, deceit, and the question of questions, “How could a good God …?”

In time I came to see that the Old Testament is a testimony of what doesn’t work for humanity seeking God’s Kingdom, and that God’s righteousness – like it or not – is unassailable. Later, I realized the New Testament – with its righteousness, sacrifice, grace, love, faith, and truth – is our path to eternal hope, life, and relationship with God.

That is what we trust God controls. That is why our joy in the Lord is our strength.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?” (Psalms 27:1). In times like these, we trust the Lord and pray for his wisdom and strength in our battle against the powers of darkness. Darkness is that which seeks to displace Jesus as Savior, replace peace and hope with fear and guilt, and misplace aspiration with desperation.

Trust in the Lord, and fight the good fight. Don’t be lured by false peace or seduced by panic. Be able “to acknowledge the truth” (2 Timothy 4:7, vv1-7). Pray. Seek God’s wisdom and strength in battles you may have to wage. Freedom isn’t free.

Life as we have known it may indeed be changing, but while politics, false gods, suspect economics, and AI technology may change our circumstances, our human machinations will never change God’s truth. That’s the one thing we can trust.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is aware God allows sin and corruption because it is in our subsequent failures and suffering that we learn the most about reliance on Jesus and God’s love. It is a recipe for joy one would not expect, but a truth we can count on.  Walters wanted to write a breezy piece about November memories. Maybe next week. 

Friends: Hope in Christ operates beyond all doubt. See below.

Blessings, Bob

P.S. – Happy birthday 10-21 to my favorite editor, Pam Walters.

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Spirituality Column #988

October 21, 20225

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Unconditional Hope

By Bob Walters

“Always be prepared … to give the reason for the hope you have.” – 1 Peter 3:15

Prior to coming to Christ, attending church, and reading the Bible – all when I was 47 years old – I had attended enough weddings that I had one Bible verse down pat, from 1 Corinthians 13: “And now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

I would not have known in those pre-Christian days that it was verse 13, or that Paul wrote it, or that it was a letter to a mess of a church in Corinth, or much of anything else about the New Testament. Well, I knew the Gospels were Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and that 1 Corinthians 13 was the “Love Chapter.” But that’s it.

Wouldn’t you know that my first day in church as an adult, the sermon was about I Corinthians 13, the crescendo of which was wonderful preacher Russ Blowers – on September 2, 2001, celebrating his 50^th anniversary of service to East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis – laying out the following about verse 13:

“Faith is about the past, hope is about the future, and love is about right now, in the present. That is why it is most important.” Or words to that effect.

For reasons I could not even guess, that line struck me as the most rational, graspable, philosophically divine Bible explanation I had ever heard.  And remember, at that point, I knew virtually nothing about the Bible. Raised in the Episcopal Church in the 1960s and serving as an altar boy, I knew the Book of Common Prayer, the Nicene Creed, the communion service (Holy Eucharist), and when to ring the bell. That’s it.

The Bible, writ large, remained opaque in my understanding until I was 47. But that day with Russ in the pulpit, something clicked in my soul.  I call it my “Awake Date,” not as a boast, but as thanks for where life in Christ has led me from then until now.

Russ’s “argument” was simple. The past is where we have seen and trusted God’s presence in life and Creation, giving us faith.  We haven’t seen the future, but our faith in what has been leads us to hope in what will be.  And love is what we know right now, the present of God’s presence and life that guides us moment to moment.

That put God in my life right now. God was, is, and always will be present. I believed, and tears welled in my eyes.  I knew this was truth; moreover, that truth existed, and that it existed in the person of Jesus Christ.  I can’t define another’s hope in Jesus, but this is the reason for the hope that I have, and I want to tell everyone.

Last week I wrote about God’s unconditional love not being a transaction but a personal, divine experience. We strive for that in our humanity but only God does it perfectly: an always present relationship with God through Jesus who covers our sins.

Today I’d like to turbocharge the meaning of “hope” up from a conditional doubt about the future to an unconditional, steadfast divine gift of God’s truth, as real as love.

Faith offers proof from the past; we have seen it, thought about it, and know it.  Hope on the other hand often bears a tacit burden of uncertainty.  Because we have not yet seen, we are forced to consider what we “hope for” to be eternal reality dangling by an un-securely tethered cord into this life’s as-yet unseen future. I.e., “What if?”

Hebrews 11:1 says “Faith is the assurance of what we hope for and the certainty of what we do not see.” I may hope, with legitimate doubt, about this life’s twists and turns. But divinely, my hope assures God loves, Jesus is King, and the Spirit abides.

Unconditionally.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will publish column #1,000 January 13, 2026 … Lord willing.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) sees the Bible more as a how-to-think book than a rulebook.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is plenty ticked about the overt, willful, agenda-driven fear-mongering of the media and political narrative. Satan wants to cancel hope.  Uh-uh.

Spirituality Column #474
December 15, 2015
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville-Geist

By Bob Walters

“We have this hope as an anchor …” – Hebrews 6:19

“Hope” the verb indirectly suggests fear and doubt about pending outcomes.

“Hope” the noun is the forthright acceptance of God’s truth.

As action, hope the verb generally designates worldly reservation, akin to wishing, supposing, wanting, desiring, or even coveting.  We hope our ball team wins the game, we’d like to think the best of people, it’d be nice to get that raise, “Why can’t we all just get along?” and “Wow, that sure is a nice car!”   Even praying for healing – for ourselves or others – probably expresses more of a temporal wish (relief from pain and inconvenience) than assured, faith-filled forfeiture to God’s eternal will.

That hope, the noun identifying man’s faithful, intellectual, God-ordained understanding of the fact of God’s glory, love, eternity and Creation, is necessary hope.  It is far larger than merely wishing to dodge the discomforts, disappointments and dismay of this fallen world.

The word “hope” appears more times in the book of Job than anywhere else in the Bible except for Psalms.  Ironically, “hope” goes unmentioned in the Gospels.

Job, the Old Testament book depicting Satan’s mischief, worldly misery, man’s doubt, interpersonal frustration and God’s confident righteousness, exposes temporal human hope – the verb – as inadequate in this fallen world.  Divine hope – the noun – creates a personal, peace-bestowing glow when shared with the eternal being of God.

The Psalms offer great hymns and prayers of the faithful, the scared, the downtrodden, the exultant, the penitent, and most especially – overarchingly – the hopeful who desire to see God’s face, know God’s presence, and share God’s love.  The psalmists pray – they hope – for a day when God’s righteousness will be apparent.

Turns out, that day of hope wasn’t what anyone was expecting.

Certainly, hope arrives in the Gospels as God’s supreme gift to mankind, but in the humble, loving, shrewd, unwavering, truth-teaching, parable-spouting, miracle-working person of Jesus Christ.  Fully God and fully man, Christ is our hope.  Many souls miss that Godly message because Jesus isn’t the “fixer” we hoped for, humility isn’t what we wanted, and loving our enemies isn’t what we had in mind.

Fallen man’s typical expression of hope is focused desperation; a plea for favor. Godly, broadband hope anchors itself in the gift of Jesus Christ: eternity with God.

While the Gospels reveal the perfect image of God’s glory in Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3), Paul describes God’s gift of hope to the faithful human intellect, a gift that facilitates and illuminates God’s eternal plan: the Glory-to-come of faithful believers.

In the here and now, we fear, we doubt.

Life in Christ, that’s what hope’s really about.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) doesn’t “hope it’s true;” he’s thankful for truth.

Spirituality Column #317
December 11, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers – Zionsville

By Bob Walters
Author of (click) Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

During the thirty years of my life that I spent religiously not going to church, I don’t recall ever searching for “hope in Christ.”

Spirituality Column #269
January 3, 2012
Current in Carmel – Westfield – Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Daily Renewal Beats Seasonal Storage
By Bob Walters

As most of us have put away our Christmas lights, decorations, knick-knacks and Mannheim-Steamroller CDs until next year, let’s not go through 2012 with Baby Jesus in a box in storage.

It is far better to remember, appreciate and reverence the idea that our everyday and eternal life in Christ is far different from – and better than – the practical, decorated, and empirical application of the limited season of Christmas.

Here is something to think about:

Christmas is largely a holiday of tradition, while Jesus Christ is entirely a messenger of hope. Tradition implies the past, and hope implies the future.

So … if Christ is about the future, why is Christmas about the past?

This simple juxtaposition of timeline I think helps explain the western world’s very fun but generally out-of-whack cultural experience of tradition-laden and commerce-fueled Christmas celebrations which fly straight-up in the face of why God sent the Christ as the divine/human baby Jesus.

I am no Grinch, but I suppose I am a bit of a hypocrite. Anyone who knows me well knows I get very attached to things and traditions. I not only enjoy but annually cling to lifelong Christmas traditions. Christmas becomes “real” to me when the home decorations go up, when I hear Christ-honoring Christmas carols (“Hark the Herald” not “Santa Baby”), read Luke 2:1-14 at Christmas Eve dinner (although I forgot this year), and listen to Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

Our system-wide culture of Christmas celebrations tends to mark emotions of the past more than hope in the future. And as a further bit of irony, it’s New Year’s that actually gets the message of hope right: “Everybody gets a second chance” is the succinct New Year’s Eve lesson from that movie of venerable wisdom, “Forrest Gump.”

But that isn’t the message of New Year’s Eve; that’s the message of Christ. “Everybody gets a second chance” – and a third, fourth and fifth and as many as we need – to get to the place where we accept in faith and understand in our hearts and minds that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and that we can and must trust him as our Lord and Savior.

As St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “inwardly we are renewed day by day.” Accepting that daily gift from Christ is better than clinging to our seasonal traditions.

Don’t store Jesus in a box. Christ is about the daily renewal of divine hope. Nothing can make a New Year any happier than that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) posts these weekly columns at www.commonchristianity.blogspot.com. Feel free to forward them to someone who cares … or more importantly, someone who doesn’t.