Ep. 126 | Embracing Hope: Transforming Despair into Faith and Optimism
In this episode of the "To Be Encouraged" podcast, Rev. Dr. Brad Miller and Bishop Julius C. Trimble dive into a profound conversation about hope, serving as a beacon to listeners in an often discouraging world. Inspired by Bishop Desmond Tutu, Bishop Trimble identifies himself as a "prisoner of hope" and emphasizes the critical need for hope in sustaining life, alongside necessities like oxygen, food, and water. He passionately believes that without hope, life can lose its essence, regardless of the material comforts available.
Throughout the episode, the speakers tackle pressing issues alongside offering insights drawn from personal and biblical stories. Rev. Dr. Brad Miller shares a poignant encounter with a young individual feeling disheartened by current global and political climates. This anecdote sets the stage for exploring how hope can be a powerful antidote to despair. Bishop Trimble, acknowledging the prevalence of fear and pessimism, advocates for nurturing hope rooted in faith and the belief in a better future led by divine guidance.
One of the key takeaways from this discussion is the importance of community and the role of the church in fostering a sense of belonging and hope. Bishop Trimble reminisces about his upbringing in a Methodist church that provided support and community during challenging times, underscoring how faith communities can drive positive change and acceptance.
Furthermore, Rev. Dr. Miller draws parallels to the perseverance needed in difficult times, referencing historical figures who endured hardship through steadfast hope. The analogy of the Stockdale Paradox is used to illustrate how maintaining hope, even amidst dire circumstances, is essential for survival and eventual triumph.
Another takeaway is the discussion on servant leadership and the responsibility of society and leaders to uplift and support all members, especially the marginalized. Bishop Trimble cites biblical principles that stress the importance of serving others and fostering kindness, providing hope both through action and spiritual encouragement.
In closing, both speakers highlight the necessity to be active dispensers of hope, not only through words but through deeds and actions that embody love and service. They conclude with a heartfelt prayer, calling for wisdom and strength to support and empower those feeling overlooked or oppressed. Ultimately, listeners are encouraged to embrace a mindset of hope, love, and resilience, championing the message that as long as there is life, there is always reason for hope.
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Hello, good people. Welcome again to the To Be
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Encourage podcast with Bishop Julius c Trimble.
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This indeed is a podcast where we look to offer an encouraging
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word to an often discouraged world. I'm your
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cohost, reverend doctor Brad Miller. Bishop Trimble,
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let's, talk today about hope. Are you ready to talk about
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that, my friend? Oh, absolutely. I love the
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bishop Desmond. The late archbishop Desmond Tutu
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described himself as a prisoner of hope, and I
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have appropriated and adopted that as
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part of my own defining self as a prisoner of
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hope. Because I think hope hope is essential. It was not that
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long ago. I would say a couple of months ago, I went to visit my
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sleep doctor. Believe it or not, Brad, I have a sleep doctor. I I
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have to get my friend. I And so he reminded
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me. He said, you know, there's four things we need to
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live. And I said, well, I think I can guess a couple of them for
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sure. He said, we need oxygen. He said, we need
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food. He said, we need water.
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And he said the fourth thing we need is sleep. Yes. He said often
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people people figure they can skip they can short
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themselves on that fourth thing, which is sleep.
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And I wanted to share share with him, I think, in fact, during the course
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of the conversation, I did share with him. Well, there's
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something else we also need to live, and that is hope.
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Yes. Yeah. We can have all the food that is necessary,
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Brad, even sufficient potable
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drinking water, which is often in short supply across the
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globe. And we can we can even have
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enough sleep or a place to sleep with millions of people on the
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move and migration and unhoused. But if we don't
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have hope, I don't know if we can make it. Of course not.
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I am I am I am part of the law the large
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chorus of people who wanna continue to to
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to to to spread hope. And hope is
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something beyond just optimism versus pessimism.
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Hope is really rooted into the belief that God is pulling
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us towards a better future. I love that analogy or
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the metaphor you use about the prisoner of hope, and I want us to
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keep keep that in mind in our conversation here today. But I also
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want to share with you that not too long ago, I was having
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a conversation with a person in their twenties who happened to be
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a gay person, and, and this person was relating hell
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given current climate politically and worldwide and
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current events, that they were feeling pretty darn discouraged.
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They in fact, they even use the world word. You know, I'm just
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gonna try to get by day to day because everything seems hopeless to
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me. So I think that's a reality that a lot of people are dealing
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with, my friend, this sense of kind of dis despair and hopelessness.
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And so, certainly, we wanna speak here in the To Be Encouraged podcast and
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encourage your word to those who are feeling that. So just go
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with me on that for a little bit. What are some, you know, you said
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you're a prisoner of hope. What are some parts of that that you can maybe
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speak into the life of people who in given current environment,
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given current situations, who are feeling a sense of hopelessness,
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how can we fill them with some hope? Well, I would say that just
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some people may have more time on the microphone,
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or they may have more more opportunity to speak
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their interpretation of truth. It doesn't make them more
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truthful. Mhmm. It doesn't make them more valuable. Yes. And I
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would say that, you know, that our dignity and our worth,
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our sacred existence, our the
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handprint of god is upon us, that can't be debated
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away or or done away with by an
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executive order of an elected official that
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that our hope is built on nothing
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less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
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Absolutely. And and the fact that we have been created in the image
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of God, and we've been created with the love of God. And
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the apostle Paul, at least it's attributed to apostle Paul in the in
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the New Testament in the book of Romans fifteenth chapter
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13 verse. May the god of hope fill you with all
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joy and peace as you trust in god.
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Yes. As you trust in god. So I would say the person's, yeah,
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I've been I've been a bit discouraged because I think
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we are being too often fed a diet of
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untruths, fed a diet of despair, fed a
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diet of fear that we need to fear
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the other people. Right. Fear things that will
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somehow detract from our blessing and joy. And
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yet, I am hopeful that the message of love
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will try will be triumphant. As our as our dear as our
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dear friend and theologian, Paul Chiricot, said, maybe the church should
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be the most loving institution and
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pronounce that as loud as possible
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so that the world will see. Well, if the world and political
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environments are feeding this diet of fear and
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hatred and distress that you've mentioned here, it seems to me
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that those of us who advocate something other than that,
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love and care and and, trust, just need to
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be that much more diligent and adamant about providing a
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diet that is at least equal to and certainly, I believe,
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multiple times, we multiply love over and over again.
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And so that things could be what we're about. And it seems to me,
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bishop Trimble, that the Bible is full of this kind of this cycle,
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if you will, of going from despair and failure
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and other bad things happening to the message of
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love and hope and faithfulness. And certainly, in the
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end, love wins even though there's a lot of
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bad stuff that happens in the interim. Can you speak to some
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biblical themes or other thoughts, theologically or
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otherwise, that that may be helpful to people who are in kind
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of a state of, where their hope is being challenged?
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I think we need to find songs that that sustain
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us. Mhmm. We need to find we need to find friends
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who will walk alongside us. We need to find places
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of of sacred sanctuary and celebration.
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The psalmist in Psalm 62 says, find rest in God.
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My hope comes from god who is both my
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rock and sal salvation and my
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fortune. So so I think part of what we need
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is to find those things that can sustain us along the journey
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and find those partners who can walk along the journey with us
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and and sing those songs. The Psalms were songs and poor
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and poems if you will. Many of them based on
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this need to recognize a sustaining
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hope. The lord is my shepherd.
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And so god is the one who will sustain us, but we also have
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responsibility for sustaining each other along the
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journey. And you followers of Jesus have always been part
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of the counterculture and part of the narrative
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that speaks against those who would say,
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somehow you don't matter or somehow you don't count or
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somehow we can do without certain certain part of the
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population, or we need to be afraid of the afraid of
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people who are different than we are. That is not the message
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of hope. Her Jurgen Moltmann, the, German
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theologian said that Christian faith,
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while it is promised, it is it is not just promised. It has to
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be lived. Mhmm. That faith has to be lived.
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And and there is no real hope apart
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from understanding the resurrection of Jesus Christ
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and the sacrifice that's made that's made. The heart of the
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Christian work is a commitment that god can change people.
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This is according to the theologian, Willie Jennings from
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Yale. The Christian work is the commitment that god not only
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can change people, but situations can. These are my
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words. Now situations can be changed if we commit
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ourselves to doing that as people of hope.
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We must be followers of Christ, ambassadors of
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hope, authorized to say, oh, yeah. It it
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does look, it might look kinda a little
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bit despair discouraging at today. But
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over the long course of history, we know that
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things will be better and shall get better. Well, it's indeed if there
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is a conspiracy basically of hatred and fear that's out there, we
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need a conspiracy of kindness and kind acts and kind things to do
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to do. Can you maybe provide some examples either out of your
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ministry or out of something else that you know of where people have done just
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what you've said here, who have, somehow spoke a word of hope into
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people either through words or deed or action. How have you seen that lived
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out either in your own experience or in the churches that you've been a
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part of, where hope has been elevated? I
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started growing up in in in my Methodist church,
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small member rather small membership Methodist church where my father died.
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That, you know, I said, you know, what what are we gonna do? We don't
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there's no father in the home. There's six six children and my
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mother, who was a school teacher. You know, what are we gonna the church
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came alongside us in that moment of grief. The church came
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alongside us when we couldn't afford to go
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to to to to I couldn't afford to go to camp, and and
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the church came alongside that to make make things possible that were
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not possible. The church came alongside a community and
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created something called a will feed program where they
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were committed to feeding people in the community that did not
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have shelter and did not have regular meals. The
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church came alongside of welcoming persons regardless of their
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sexual orientation, and this is in the nineteen
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eighties. Now I'm not talking 2022 or
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2023. So we've always been in a position as people of
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faith and as churches to say, listen,
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there is a there can be a sense of belonging if we create that sense
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of belonging. Again, doctor Jennings, Willie Jennings says
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at the heart of the Christian community is to is to create
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belonging where where there had previously been boundaries,
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borders, segregation, and separation.
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And so the message that's being fostered most
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recently, is that there's a need to to
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cut because there's waste in our government.
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There's a need to stop the proliferation
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of celebration of diversity. Not only do we need to
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stop the celebration of diversity, we need to reverse that
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because it it in and of itself is is
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discriminate discrimination. The fact that we're trying to
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address historical wrongdoings,
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or create a a a society that is more
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culturally hume humble, culturally
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aware and competent and accommodating. Now we wanna
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say no. What we wanna do is focus
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on English only, wealthy only,
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some people only, and not all of this notion.
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Right. There's room there's room there's more than enough for everybody. Yeah.
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There's a culture of hubris, I'll call it, that is
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out there that permeates a lot of the thinking that kind of a top down
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thing, kind of created by government and institutions and
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things like that. Whereas the humility, I believe, is the
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counterculture to the hubris, and that really comes in
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personal relationships, I believe, you know, and that's a place lived
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out either interpersonally, either one on one or in small groups.
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And it seems to me, ideally, the church would be a great
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place for a lot of that to happen. Can you speak to that? Did you
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first of all, do you agree with this that there's a sense of hubris out
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here, you know, arrogance, if you will, and that there is also a
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sense of humility that we need to really lift up the humility
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and, celebrate that as well. And there may be a place we can live that
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out as in the as in the church. Absolutely. I think,
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I think there's been an abandonment of the understanding of the
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the democratic experiment of we the
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people. Right. Somehow, we we don't wanna we don't wanna have that.
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The the conversation is no longer centered around we the people.
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It's now about, as you mentioned, hubris and arrogance, that
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somehow a a handful of people know what's best.
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Mhmm. And and and wanna dictate that to the rest of the population.
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But I think that God's word still is true in Jeremiah
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29 verse 11. For
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surely the prophet says it, for surely I know the plans I have for you,
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says the lord. Yeah. Plans for your welfare and
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not for your harm. To give you a
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future fill with hope. Awesome.
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Then at the next verse said, when you call upon me and come and pray
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to me, I will hear you. So we have a prayer
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inviting god, a prayer answering god, And I like
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I like to think this is not totally devoid from our relationship
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with our body politic because one of the things Abraham
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Lincoln said was that the role of the government was
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to uplift the lift the weight from the shoulders of all of its
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citizens. And so you can we can measure
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a government in part by whether or not whether or not
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it's about the business of lifting of all the heavy weight
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upon all of its citizens. And, of course, Jesus
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and Matthew said, he will judge the nations and
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divide some on the left and some on the right, and it'll be
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based upon whether or not we fed the hungry or
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clothe the naked or gave water to the thirsty
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or came alongside those who were in prison or proclaim
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liberty to those who were oppressed and of course, you know, everybody's gonna raise
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the question, well, when it, So who's guilty of that?
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Jesus even gives a response to that. He said, when you when you've done it
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to the least of these, you've done it to me. So I I
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I I'm I'm a little I'm a little concerned about those who are
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interpreting actions that bring harm
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particularly to the marginalized is somehow,
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you know, acceptable and from from any kind of
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logical understanding. Yeah. Who would
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know who would have thought that acting like Jesus might be a good thing to
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do? That's interesting that, so it seems like, that
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seems like antithetical to the
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role that many public officials have that
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seems they've had forgotten that the call of public,
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officials actually is public service. And
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for many, it's, something else. It's a public domination
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or something like that. And so we just have a lot of work to do,
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don't we? Don't we, Bishop? We have a lot of work to do today. Absolutely.
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The only the only true leadership, Lencioni and other
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leadership experts have said, the only true leadership is
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servant leadership. And, you know, I think about think
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about my congresspeople, congresswomen, congressmen.
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You know, it says United States Congress or senators. It
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says United States. It doesn't just say, you know, the people
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that you think voted for you are the people who gave more than
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$2,000 to your to your Sure. Election coffers.
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It says, you know, all of the citizens of the of the of the country
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and all of those persons who are covered by the constitution. So
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So I think my prayer I pray I pray for people who are elected
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official. This is a tough time for them. I pray for our president and the
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this new administration. But I also pray for the voices
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of those who have been called to speak a
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word of hope and to speak a word of
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belonging to to to to the population
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of the world. Yeah. I speak I think the hope aspect, that's one of the
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themes of hope biblically and in my life, and I believe in
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yours, as you and I have got to know each other better the last few
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years, is that hope is what sustains us when things
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are not so good. You know, hope can keep us going. We
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can have celebrations when things are good, and we can have grief
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when death occurs and things like that. But hope is what sustains us when time
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turns so good. I can't help but think about about
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the Stockdale paradox, which maybe you and I talked about
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before by admiral Stockdale during the Vietnam era who,
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was in the Hanoi Hilton prison. And there was those people who were
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in prison with him who had kind of a kind of a fan of
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fault idea that they're going to get out of their situation right away,
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and they didn't survive. You know, they would not survive very long because they thought,
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well, I'll be out by Christmas and didn't happen that way. And there are other
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people who didn't survive were those ones who said I'll never get out of here.
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I'll never never, you know, I'll never survive this, and
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they didn't either. The ones who survived and got through it were the
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ones who still endured who chose to
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endure the tragedy, endure their circumstances, and
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still chose to have hope regardless. Those are the ones
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who got through it. And I think maybe we're in kind of one of those
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crucible times we when we have to choose hope even when
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there's some challenges to it. Speak to that if you will for a minute.
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Absolutely. You said it you said it best. I think Viktor Frankl talks
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Yes. It's it's a similar kind of story from from a holocaust
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survivor. Those people who had something to look forward
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to always were able to to to cling to
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that cling to that hope. Right. We have to be able to be
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dispensers of hope. Not not just with
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biblical quotes or or or or or what we
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might call helpful cliches. Right. But I think we really It's
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more than just prayers and concerns. Right? We gotta be active.
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Absolutely. More than thought more than thoughts and prayers. More than thoughts and prayers. Right.
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Right. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I think but but but hope can
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be visceral. Hope can be physical. Hope
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can be, you know, it it's also it's painting a picture
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of we know that god is faithful over the long
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history of time. The question is, will we be faithful?
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And and that requires not only our prayers, but also
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our participation Yes. In the live in the lives of
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others. So so I'm hopeful that we
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will not abandon the people of Gaza. Oh, yes. I'm
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hopeful that we will not we will not, you
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know, succumb to the belief that that somehow Palestinians
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and Israelis cannot cannot live as they have
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for centuries, you know, in the same geographical
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areas sharing some of the same dirt.
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I I believe that that not only is that possible. And I think about,
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you know, the writings and the and the prayers of Jimmy Carter and
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others who've gone on before us. So I use that as one
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example. I I I'm hopeful that there can be sustained
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peace in the Democratic Republic Of The Congo Yes. And that
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and that we will not just define ourselves by our tribal
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allegiances or our tribal origins. Yes. And I know that
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that's possible because it's happened before. Yes. It can it can
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happen again. Indeed. Indeed. Well, let's let's just wrap this up with like, we
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almost always do, miss Trebelle, with, given
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the context of our conversation here today, what are you encouraged
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about? What has happened that you encourages you, and what word of
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encouragement can you speak to our, to be encouraged
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audience? I think that, I I'm encouraged by
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the fact that there's so much creativity
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that's still bubbling up and happening all around us, and
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people are talking about on social media and interpreting in a
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variety of ways. I think about the the
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recent Super Bowl halftime. People are still talking about the
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halftime show Right. Kendrick Lamar and interpreting
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it in all kinds of ways. But they're artists, they're
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preachers, they're kids, they're school school
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children who are learning and listening. And I think
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we we need to start identifying and encouraging who our
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future leaders will be right now today. So I I I'm encouraged.
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It's been some weeks ago, but I had a chance to sit with some younger
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younger pastors who are enthusiastic about
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the gospel Mhmm. And and about about the
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message of Jesus Christ. And, so
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I'm encouraged by encouraged by So there's there is
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there is reason for hope. Is that what I'm hearing you say? There's reason for
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hope. Yes. There's reason for hope. Alright. Alright. Well, why don't you As long as
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there is breath, there is reason for hope. As long as
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there is God and one of my colleagues always says, I'm
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not worried because I've seen I've read about the end of the movie and
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God wins. God wins. Absolutely. Well, I believe that.
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I know you believe that. And so why don't we just give a close our
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episode here today with a word of hope by giving a prayer of hope for
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our folks who may be listening to us. Do you mind doing that, my friend?
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Most certainly. Loving god, we thank you for the gift of life.
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Lord, we know we need air. We know we need water. We know we
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need food. We know we need sleep, lord, and we
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definitely need hope. Grant us hope even as you grant
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us wisdom. Grant us hope even as you grant us
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the willingness, oh lord, to walk alongside those who are
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marginalized and those who are often overlooked
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or or not counted, lord. Bless us, oh lord, to be a
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blessing, to open doors of opportunities for others
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to to to feed those who are hungry both the
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physical food that is necessary but the spiritual food that
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will sustain us. Lord, we ask that we might amplify the love
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of Jesus Christ. We are not giving any
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energy to hating our so called enemies. We
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are only siblings who have not yet found their way to always
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walk in the same pathway. Help us, oh god,
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to not abandon those who have been discouraged
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or disrespected. Help us, lord, to
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remember those who are fearful now because maybe they are, quote,
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unquote, undocumented and they are living in the shadows.
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Help us, oh lord, to remember those who who identify as
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something other than male or female. Those who have been
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attacked because they have identified themselves as transgender.
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Those who are attacked because they have dared to proclaim
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that they believe in the good news of Jesus Christ. Help us,
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oh god, not only to be recipients of
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hope, but to become ambassadors of hope
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with the love of Jesus Christ. In Christ's name, we
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pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. And we thank you for
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listening to the To Be Encourage podcast
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with Bishop Julius c Trimble, the podcast that offers an
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encouraging word to an often discouraged world.
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