Gladness Today In The Hope of Tomorrow

 “The hope of the righteous shall be gladness: but the expectation of the wicked shall perish.” (Pr 10:28 AV)

 

For those who are unaware, when italicized words appear in the King James Bible, it is the translator’s way of letting the reader know those words were added to make the grammar run smoother in the English rather than a forward-transliterated offering.  If the reader were to remove the phrase ‘shall be’, the text would read exactly as it would in the Hebrew.  I say this because normally, shall be is future tense.  In other words, the hope which the righteous has will be turned to gladness sometime in the future.  However, in this case, because of the phrase ‘shall be’ is italicized, most commentators agree it should be read as present tense.  So, we understand the Solomon to say that the hope of the righteous most assuredly is gladness.  Gladness and hope go hand-in-hand.  Hope the light which shines out of darkness.  Hope is what we know to be true in the future working out in the present.  As John Gill wrote, “…he rejoices in hope of the glory of God, and is enabled to hold fast the rejoicing of his hope firm unto the end…”.

Let’s face it.  The world is short on hope these days.  And because we are short on hope, we are not very glad.  Anger and hopelessness permeates the land.  This feeling of hopelessness is part circumstances and part manipulation.  We are caught up in a constant state of agitation and anxiety.  I am not one who believes everything is a mental health issue, but we are facing unprecedented numbers of people facing depression and anxiety.  In my generation, comedians usually drew on normal life’s experiences as their material for laughter.  Childhood, marriage, or culture were those things that made us laugh.  There was no malice.  There were no woke moments based on spite.  Monologues had more to do with the family dog than what political or social ill the audience was feeling.  There was an eye of optimism shared by all.  When we saw men land on the moon or new technological advances we saw a brighter future.  Today, there seems to be no hope at all.  And consequently, no gladness.

No so for the righteous.  We know the worse things get the closer we are to Jesus coming back.  The older we get we understand we are all the more closer to eternity.  Our hope has never been and never will be in this temporary world.  As Peter tells us, all these things will be consumed in a fire.  The LORD will recreate in true holiness and righteousness.  Those verse in Revelation we quote at a funeral are still true.  No sickness, no pain, no sorrow.  Only gladness.  This is our gladness.  Not in what we see today, but what we know is coming tomorrow.  Solomon chooses his words very carefully.  He uses the word gladness instead of rejoicing.  There will still be hardships.  So, there might be little rejoicing.  But gladness can come while we suffer hardships.  These two can exist together.  Another word for hope is faith.  If we are suffering from a lack of gladness, then we need to check our faith.  Faith has always been the key.  There is no other way.  Trust the LORD and look to the future.  There is always a brighter day ahead.