Hope deferred makes the heart sick

 Imagine the scene: The Rev Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. standing there, looking at into the eyes of the oppressed, downtrodden, those who have mourned, those who were broken, in despair, in search of hope – the mass staring back up to the one they were praying would give them a new dream…

Dr King knew that the dream of America is not and could never be, bound up in the hopes of man as such hopes are fleeting. Hope that heals is hope that is permanent - tattooed on the heart (or hand) so as never to be forgotten. So, when the Rev. Martin Luther King stood before the watching world to proclaim the end of legal discrimination against all people, he did so as one who had seen God’s righteousness enacted at the Cross, and was therefore hungry for righteousness in his own day. And because this reality of righteousness can come only from God Himself, Dr King, in his speech, cried out to the Lord with the words of the prophet Isaiah, proclaiming the coming of the Lords day.

The voice of one crying in the wilderness [saying:] Prepare ye the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. For every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together (Isaiah 40.3-5)

Dr King knew what the church must know, what the world must come to know: that our hunger and thirst for righteousness are only satisfied by and in Christ. This hunger must be our hope here and now – it must propel us to live out Jesus’ insane love. As Proverbs 13.12 states, Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

If our hope is not in Christ because our hunger and thirst are for the savory tastes of society as opposed to the Savior of society, it is certain our hearts will be made sick.