All Articles
What Does Despair Look Like
Despair.
In Auschwitz there was a word used by the old ones of the camp to describe the weak, the inept, those doomed to selection. "Muselmanner." Camp inmates so emaciated they had lost the will to live. They moved about in a state of utter apathy, didn’t look after themselves, and gradually joined the ranks of the hopeless, wasting away to skin and bones, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to suffer. Their life is short, but their number is endless.
What does despair look like?
Consider the prodigal, who after wasting away his inheritance, wallowed in the mire, longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, yearning for the day to be just a hired servant in his father’s house. (Luke 15.13-17)
What does despair look like?
Perhaps it’s the man who weeps uncontrollably in the courtyard after hearing the loud cry of a rooster as his friend, the man he once called Rabbi (Mark 9.5), is being led away to His death. (Mark 14.72)
What does despair look like?
It’s the plaintive cry of over three thousand souls from every nation who discovered they were complicit in the cruel death of the Christ, the very One the prophets longed to see and hear (Matthew 13.17). “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2.37)
What does despair look like?
It’s in the phrases we find throughout the Pauline epistles. Children of wrath (Ephesians 2.3). Slaves to sin (Romans 7.14). Enemies of God (Romans 5.10). Lawless. Ungodly. Unholy. Profane. (1 Timothy 1.8-9). Dead in your trespasses (Colossians 2.13). Worthy of death (Romans 1.32).
What does despair look like?
Peter, in his letter to the exiles of the Dispersion wrote:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
1 Peter 1.3-4
Under the shadow of the cross, despair quickly fades to hope. To reconciliation. To victory. To glory. For the Christian, the emblem of suffering and shame is a reminder that our despair, the shadows of the soul that so quickly engulf us, is quickly torn away by the blood of the Lamb. The chasm that lay between us and the Father is no more. The debt has been paid “by the blood of the eternal covenant” (Hebrews 13.20).
So on this day. The first day of the week. As we gather together at the Supper of the Christ. The question “what does despair look like?” becomes moot. In its place, we find another, more poignant question:
What does hope look like?
We live in a world that is often called hopeless. A hopeless world of despair is often how many people feel about life. We, however, have a hope that is alive. We have something to set our eyes upon when life becomes full of suffering and difficulty. The God of ages stepped down from glory to wear our sins and bear our shame. The cross has spoken. We are forgiven.
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being out to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.
1 Peter 3.18
Despair and death have lost its grip on us. Let us praise the One who has set us free. Jesus Christ, our living hope.
Hallelujah! Praise God.
