Forward to the Kingdom!

As I was listening to President Barack Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night (Feb. 24), I was thinking about the State of the Union (even though he, like every president since Kennedy, didn’t call his first speech an official “State of the Union” address). The problems President Obama outlined are indeed serious, and they go beyond just the “Union.” In fact, they are universal.

If someone were to give a “State of the Universe” address, what would its tone be?

President Obama strove to bring a serious tone, but a hopeful one. He said “our economy is in crisis.” He decried the fact that Americans “import more oil today than ever before” and “pile up more debt…than ever before.” He said the “day of reckoning has arrived.”

But he concluded with stories of hope “found in unlikely places.” He told of “Leonard Abess, the bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus, and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him.”

And he ended with praise for Ty’Sheoma Bethea, a student he met in Dillon, South Carolina, who was sitting next to Michelle Obama in the audience. “She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, ‘We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters.’”

I feel for President Obama facing the reality of the troubles piling up today. Truth be told, there is nothing any human can do to fix this hopeless situation. Still, “We are not quitters” was President Obama’s rallying cry for resilience and determination. It reminded me of an immortal rallying cry and words of real hope penned long ago. Take a look at Romans chapter 8 as a “State of the Universe” address—one that ends with real, powerful hope!

First, the sobering state of affairs today, caused by the sins of every one of us: “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now” (Romans 8:22).

Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible expands on the meaning of the Greek words behind this passage: “Groans together. All is united in a condition of sorrow. The expression denotes mutual and universal grief. It is one wide and loud lamentation, in which a dying world unites; and in which it has united ‘until now.’”

The apostle Paul also describes the “futility” and “bondage of corruption” of this world (verses 20-21), but he doesn’t leave it there. This chapter continues with some of the most stirring hope ever recorded:

“Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:37-39).

That’s one of my favorite scriptures. It reminds us that God is love. God has a plan for each of us, and He is not a quitter! Only He can turn our hopes into reality.

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