Now to that 18th verse: Do hearts have eyes?
Potatoes have eyes, or at least that is what we call those odd outgrowths from potatoes that we have bought but not cooked. Hearts though? Those sit inside us and motivate us. Blood flow is one thing and not really what Paul is driving at here. In these verses, it is more about motive-flow. With God’s instruction, guidance and strength we can flow our persons out into the stream of life in a godly manner. To pump that type of blood into the streams of life around us requires seeing with the heart. Once a person has learned bits and pieces of this they live differently and that impacts others differently.
Three more building blocks for the Ephesian believers:
Hope
Usually when we hope there is something the hope is targeting. Maybe you can relate to things like, “I hope the house sells for this much money,” or “Fido disappeared three days ago! I hope he comes home.”
When I think back across my life looking for moments with that type of hope one of the most poignant recollections is Christmastime of my 11th or 12th years. We lived in Alabama at the time and my brothers, and I had some catalog with electronic things: fabulous, imagination-firing, desire-inducing must-haves for boys. I cannot remember the exact focus of that hope of all hopes that came up off of those pages, but it was some type of radio control dune-buggy or car. As it would turn out, I did not get what I was dreaming of, but my parents did get me a radio control police car. With no effort, I can remember that machine with its sirens and its blue and red lights. It was not what I wanted, after all, to make it turn you had to go backward. There was a little wheel underneath it that would make the car turn while in reverse. What kind of real car does that?! Still, I puttered around with it; I remember it. Now I fly drones; I guess first hopes die hard.
Paul is not writing about police cars or even police chariots. My first impressions of verse 18 landed there, and after writing of them I rose and went off to the kitchen to juggle coffee things and the like where God took my mental focus off in another direction. That direction kept popping up its head all throughout the day as I cut down a dying tree, blew leaves off the street, and glued together the last lengths of a PVC drainage pipe1.
…that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you…
The hope that Paul speaks of is not hope for health, radio-control police cars, right-now happiness or any of these types of things. No, look at the phrase of that 18th again. It is a hope that…GOD…has called us to. GOD chose the hope for me, for you. GOD chose this for us as part of HIS plan. HIS decisions called us in a certain direction, and it is not one that I build out in my mind.
Do you think that Paul ever hoped to be the apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles? That would have been such a remote concept for a Jewish man of his caliber that I can hardly imagine such a thing. If I reflect the smallest bit on this I would craft such a thing in a mind like Saul’s to be an anti-hope, a thing of ultimate repulsion: Christ and the Gentiles? But, look at what he is known for. He is so known as a Christian that it has eclipsed the prestige he had in the Jewish world. Indeed, some non-Christian circles consider him to be the Father of Christianity.
The prowess he possessed in First Century Judaism (there is odd humor in that for “First Century” is first because of how the arrival of Christ altered the calendars) was plowing him into hateful waters. God turned Paul’s ship. This was not man-done, but God conceived. As they say, “Truth is stranger than fiction,” or, as my Jewish colleague responds to incredible 21st Century moments, “You can’t make this stuff up!”
What about you and me? What about the Ephesians to whom Paul composed this letter we are studying? He writes them and says he is praying that they may know the hope to which GOD called THEM. He is not in the remotest manner saying, “I am praying that your hopes will work out the way you want them to.” That, I think, is the manner in which we take them.
The manifold wisdom of God will be displayed, and in that, we will find the hope God destined for us. Remember all that talk Jesus gave about taking up one’s cross and following him? Or, what about seeking his kingdom first and leaving the other things up to God? What about loving God so much that it appears you hate your family?
Hope as Paul writes of it is no different. God has called everyone to a relationship with him. There is no higher hope than that to which God calls us. It might align with our initial notions of excellence, but it very well may not. God does give us the desires of our heart, but sometimes he has to get out the Windex and clean the windows so we can see what our heart really desires. He happens to know. Many times we hope in the dark for things that will not bring true happiness. False hopes we make for ourselves. God navigates us right past those and on into vistas much wider, panoramas quite a bit more vibrant.
Now, don’t suppose that my writing this, my teaching this, your reading this is going to point out to you what your hope is. That is between you and God. Just realize that God is not calling you to the happiness that you would craft for yourself. He is calling you to a higher one, a lasting one, one that will jive with his purpose. If you don’t like looking at it that way, place your trust in Christ and wait for it. You will.
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