So in high school I drove a 1982 Ford Escort 4-door hatchback. It was sunset yellow, I remember the name of the color because it took me three trips to the hardware store and 9 cans of sunset yellow spray paint to make it that way.
It came with an AM radio. FM was apparently optional in 1982, as were cassette decks, which I also didn’t have.
The interior was upholstered with the finest premium white vinyl, which is a fancy way of saying dingy plastic.
I loved that car. I paid $400 cash for it, and at $4.25 an hour, it was the single most expensive thing I had ever bought.
So, since I had the coolest car, I got to make the rounds in the morning before school and pick up all my friends so they didn’t have to ride the bus. Well, we were very close to the school… close enough to walk, actually, which was a good thing.
With all the excitement, what I hadn’t noticed was that I was about to run out of gas. Which we did. But I wasn’t worried… 1. Because we were close enough to walk to school, and 2. Because just over that hill in front of us was a gas station.
The car was still rolling but losing momentum fast. And I was pretty good in physics class, but I was also a cross country runner, and sometimes that got the better of me. And what went through my head was something confusing about Newton’s laws of motion, which I interpreted as: it will be easier to keep this car rolling and help it over the hill than to try and start pushing it up hill again after it comes to a stop.
So I looked at my speedometer. 30 miles an hour. I should wait. 25 miles an hour. We’re losing momentum fast. 20 miles an hour uphill. It feels like we’re barely moving. Cars were wizzing past. It was now or never. I opened the driver’s side door, one hand on the steering wheel and one hand on the door.
Now, I want you to keep in mind that Usain Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter, can run a very short distance at almost 28 miles per hour. My top speed in a cross country meet was more like 9 miles an hour. I was not a sprinter.
But now my 1982 Ford Escort is moving a little over twice as fast as I could possibly run, and I’m being dragged alongside. The door is coming closed on me. I’m trying not to pull on the steering wheel which would have sent me veering into oncoming traffic.
My friend finally reached over with his foot and hit the brake. And no one died. My friends walked to the school and I walked to the gas station.
I’ve never done that again.
I can’t imagine what the driver of the car behind me was thinking… but I can tell you, all I was thinking about was holding on as tight as I possibly could.
The third invitation regarding our relationship towards God is found in Hebrews 10:23. It says, “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess,” and it gives us a reason, “for he who promised is faithful.”
Unswervingly.
This is the only place in the scripture where this word unswervingly is used. We don’t use it commonly either. I think if I were asked to use it in a sentence, I would quote this verse.
But the word means something like incline. It’s like the crown of a road, it’s higher in the middle and slopes away to the right and the left to shed water and prevent erosion and those terrible potholes we are so familiar with in Michigan.
So, let me read it this way, “Let us hold to the hope we profess, without inclining to the right or the left.”
In essence, let us stay centered on the hope we profess, without drifting to the right, or drifting to the left.
And we can do this, as individuals and as a community, as the church, the verse tells us, because God is faithful. It’s not because we have good aim, or because we are steady, it’s because he is.
Hope.
And it’s also interesting to study through the book of Hebrews this word hope, elpis. Everywhere it’s used in Hebrews, it is paired with confidence in the work of God.
Hebrews 3:6 says Christ is the faithful servant responsible for the household and family of God, and we have hope and confidence because of that.
Hebrews 6:11 says that our hope will be fully realized when we inherit what God has promised.
Hebrews 6:18-19 says our hope is tied as with a rope to an anchor holding fast in the work of Jesus.
And Hebrews 7:19 tells us that our hope is a better hope than what came before it, because it is Jesus who stands behind it.
We know we can draw near to God with sincerity and full assurance… but we can also have a true hope because the God of that hope is faithful.