Hello my friends,

This week, I wanted to look at persisting in hope even when things feel hopeless. In the heaviness of everything that is happening right now, it can be easy to just be overwhelmed and wonder if it is even worth continuing to resist injustice. We can tell ourselves it is always worth it, but sometimes we can feel overwhelmed just the same. At the same time, we can see such great signs of hope, like our neighbors raising their voices in peaceful protest against injustice to show solidarity together in this time. How we persist in between hope and injustice is what I want to think about with you today through the lens of Luke 18:1-8. I hope you find it helpful.

Recommended Resources

-What Does it Profit a Nation to Deport Immigrants & Lose Its Soul? by Esau McCaulley. I found this article by theologian and scholar Esau McCaulley to be really insightful and compelling.

-Oklahoma abandons requirement for Bibles in every classroom Wanted to share some good news on the separation of church and state front in Oklahoma!

-75-year-old Olasky named editor of Christianity Today With the constant shift in media landscape, I just wanted to make you aware of some changes that have happened over at Christianity Today.

-The Structure of Hope. Given this week's theme, I wanted to share this article I wrote about a structured practice that I personally use to keep hope alive. I hope you find it helpful as well.

-Caring in a Cruel World. Here is another article I wrote recently on the practice of caring in our world of rising authoritarianism. A lot of people responded saying this was helpful, so I thought I'd share it again here.

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The Widow's Prayerful Protest.

Luke 18:1-8

"Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not lose heart. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’

“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”

And the Lord said, “Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

There are few parables Jesus tells that strike so directly at the heart of our exhaustion with the world’s injustice as this one, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge. Luke tells us that Jesus shared this story “about the need to pray always and never lose heart.” I can’t think of a more timely word. In a world that feels increasingly heavy with cruelty, corruption, lies, and despair, Jesus doesn’t give us easy comfort. Instead, he gives us a story about a broken system and a woman who courageously refuses to surrender to it.

The widow in Jesus’ story represents the most vulnerable among us, not only because she lacks power, status, and resources, but because she lives in a system designed to ignore her. The judge she faces “neither fears God nor respects people.” In other words, he embodies the very opposite of what God’s justice should look like. Yet the widow persists. Her power is not in position or privilege, but in her holy audacity to keep showing up. As New Testament Professor Eric D. Barreto notes, “Her persistence in a broken system is a model for us to follow, knowing as we do that God’s economy of grace is not ruled by the whims of a judge.”

Now, it is important here not to mistake the judge's character for God's character. That has too often been our interpretive error. God is nothing like this corrupt man who must be worn down into doing what is right. The whole point of the parable, as with many parables, hinges on contrast, not comparison. If even an unjust, cynical, self-serving judge can be moved to act, how much more then will a God of compassion and justice respond to the cries of the oppressed? God does not answer out of annoyance or exhaustion but out of love and steadfast care.

In the first century, widows often stood as symbols of those society had failed to protect, people with no institutional power, often exploited or overlooked by those meant to defend them. The widow’s insistence on justice, then, becomes an act of resistance against the cynicism of empire and the apathy of religious elites. She refuses to accept that the way things are is the way things must always be.

This is why Jesus tells this story to his followers, “so that they might not lose heart.” Hope is not a sentimental optimism that things will somehow work out; hope is the subversive conviction that injustice and death will not have the final word and acting on that belief. Hope is not passive waiting it’s active persistence. Hope prays, peacefully protests, weeps, and keeps showing up.

Faith, in this parable, looks less like certainty and more like a stubborn love. It’s the willingness to believe in God’s justice even when those in power seem intent on defying it. To quote Barreto again, he calls it, “faith that demands justice in a world coursing with injustice… faith that persists in seeking life even in systems seemingly ruled by the forces of death.” This is the faith Jesus wonders if he will find when he returns, not the faith that confesses correct doctrines or wins culture wars, but the faith that refuses to give up on God’s dream of justice, mercy, and restoration.

When we look around today at systems that mistreat the immigrant, that crush the poor, at leaders who mock compassion, and at the cold machinery of violence and greed, we might find ourselves wondering where God is. In times like these, it is natural to feel a mix of hope and fear. Hope, because communities are coming together to lift their voices peacefully and work together, yet fear because our nation feels as if it is teetering on the edge and the rhetoric and mistreatment against those who disagree with those in power grows increasingly hostile. It is both a moment of beauty and fragility.

Many of us have lived through or have at least read about dark times before, and history reminds us that light can return. Even the Book of Revelation reminds us that empires of injustice are not sustainable and always crumble by self inflicted wounds. Injustice is not sustainable. But even with this knowledge, sustaining hope in the face of concentrated power and intentional harm is a struggle. But Jesus reminds us: God is not like the unjust judge. God is the One who listens to the cries of the weary, who takes the side of the oppressed, who enters into our pain and works for our liberation.

The widow’s persistence then mirrors the heartbeat of divine faithfulness itself, the relentless, patient, enduring love of God that keeps coming for us, no matter how unjust the world becomes.

If we can manage even a little bit of that kind of persistent hope, we will not lose heart and we might just yet see injustice give way to justice. May it be so with us.

A Prayer for Those Who Refuse to Lose Heart

God of justice and mercy,
You are nothing like the unjust judge.
Where power corrupts, You redeem.
Where indifference reigns, You listen.
Where despair takes root, You plant hope.

Teach us the persistence of the widow —
the courage to keep praying,
the strength to keep showing up,
the faith to keep believing
that Your kingdom is already among us.

Let our hope be fierce and our compassion bold.
And when You return,
may You find in us a faith that has not given up,
a love that has not grown cold,
and a people still crying out for justice.

Amen.

Now I'd like to hear from you! Did you find this helpful? What thoughts came to your mind as you read? Feel free to respond to this email and share your thoughts with me. I look forward to reading them. New 30 Day Devotional: I recently wrote a 30 day devotional in hopes to provide a companion for people seeking to follow Jesus in our world today. You can read more about it here: $20.00 Following Jesus In A World Obsessed With Empires: 30 Days of reclaiming the hope, compassion, and justice of Jesus. Today, our world can often feel overwhelmed by darkness, division, and despair. I created this 30-day devotional to... Read more Get it now! ​ Ways to support: If you'd like to support this project, you can do so through one-time-gift of any amount you feel is right. You can also subscribe through a $5/mo, $15/mo, or $25/mo. Several others have also asked for a recurring gift option that is different from the ones offered here, like this one. If you'd like me to set up a different option for you, please just send me an email with the word "support" in the subject line. As always, I really want to thank all of you for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every single week. I'm thankful for the ways we are building this together and hope it creates a lasting, positive change in our world along the way! I sincerely appreciate you all, Ben Remember, you can now view this and all previous newsletters as well as invite friends to join through this link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.

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