Description: Join us for an introductory conversation on why we called this podcast The Hope We Hold. Where do you find encouragement and hope in a world so full of disappointment, hate, and sin? We are here to redefine the wishful thinking often associated with Hope, and give you an invitation into a life defined by peace.
Summary:
Jeremy states that the idea for the podcast stems from Peter 3:15 (“but in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready at any time to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.”)a verse that has meant a lot to both of them. Jeremy is very passionate about not being arrogant in your defense and showing respect to those who ask a reason.
He goes on to ask Jinger what she thinks most people think of when they hear the word “hope”. She responds that it’s “wishful thinking, fingers crossed”. She uses an analogy of a wishing well. Jeremy says the connotation for hope is that it is a dream or a chance.
They talk about the difference in Christian hope, with Jinger saying “Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It is rock solid confidence in Jesus Christ... when God speaks we don’t have to cross our fingers and hope...”. Jeremy speaks at length regarding how your hope in someone is deeply dependent on your trust in that person. He relates this back to Jesus promising eternal life and that because God has proven to be faithful and trustworthy, Heaven isn’t a wishful or “fingers crossed” scenario but rather something that is guaranteed. Jinger says that “Hope is not based in the circumstances of our lives” and Jeremy gives the example of a cancer patient with a terminal diagnosis having an easier time accepting this news because they have Christian Hope. They really push that the secular world has nothing to offer, it’s only the eternal world that can provide hope. Earlier in the show Jeremy had stated “Politics isn’t the place to put trust. People let us down, money can disappear, health is fading. Really where can we put our trust in this world that won’t sooner or later let us down?”
At the start of the podcast they said they want listeners to submit questions as well as their own stories of how hope plays out in their lives, this is reiterated as the podcast winds down. Upcoming episodes will be about how this “Christian Hope” guides them in life, topics they plan on tackling include parenting, relationships and hardships such as a miscarriage.
Highlights:
During her wishing well analogy Jinger starts to say “pennies” but then switches to “nickles” and ends up insinuating people throw pickles in wishing wells. Jeremy later jokes about the pickles and they talk about how pickles have been Jingers top pregnancy craving.
They nearly exclusively refer to each other as “Jing” and “Jer”.
Jinger makes mention of this really beautiful analogy of hope as a “buoy for the soul”.
My very secular takeaway: It was nice-ish. The intro music is upbeat and pleasant. The production quality is good. Their voices work really well together, Jinger has an especially calm voice without nearing the wispy tone we tend to hear from some fundie women. I believe it’s stated more than once that the goal for the podcast is making a Christ centered life understandable and relatable. I would refer to this as digestible Christianity, very “peace and love”. The desire to be social media influencers is coming across loud and clear. There was victim blame-y vibes in all of the spiels about Christians having nothing to fear or no reason to worry, pretty big implications there. Really thankful for the education I’ve received in this community that allows me to spot the Christian brand of toxic positivity.
Description: We are here to humbly discuss recent events, the death of George Floyd, and how we as Christians should be reacting. What does true compassion look like? Does Jesus understand our pain? Is there an offer of change that is big enough, strong enough, to save us from hatred, abuse, racism…to save us from sin? Join us in a reflective perspective of what a biblical, hopeful response might look like.
*Due to the topic of this episode I have chosen not to provide a summary or review on this original post. Rather I have provided a (subpar,flawed) transcript of the episode.
Jinger: Hey we're Jinger and Jeremy Vuolo and this is The Hope We Hold Podcast.
Jeremy: Where we have weekly conversations around our family table to share the hope of Jesus.
Jinger: These are dark days we're living in and we've been grieving as individuals, as a nation, over the events from last week and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN. Jeremy and I, as we watched the video, we watched with shock and horror and sorrow and it's just too much to bear emotionally. And I know many of you are feeling the same as we should. because God has made us as people with minds, intellects and emotions and we grieve. Jesus himself wept and we weep because of the brokenness of this world.
Jeremy: Yeah to think of Jesus one of the descriptions of Christ was that he was a man of sorrows. Of all the ways he was and could have been described he was described as a man of sorrows. Here”the creator of the universe descended into the world he made and he wept”. So today we want to discuss how a Christian world view ought to shape our response to what we see going on around us. The hatred, the violence, really the effects of sin in this life.
Jinger: It's difficult but God has given us some clues about why what is happening is so painful to deal with and I think we need to start where the bible starts, at creation. And we read this in Genesis 1 26-28 "Then God said 'Let us make man in our image after our likeness. So god created man in his own image and the image of God he created him, male and female he created them and God blessed them". That's pretty amazing just to think about that, that we are made in the image of God.
Jeremy: Yeah it's what theologians have called "the imago dei" which is just the Latin phrase for the image of God.
Jinger: Mm yeah and it gives us dignity to every single person which is why what we witness this last week was so horrific.
Jeremy: Yeah.
Jinger: Yeah so the image of God on man becomes even more incredible when we understand just how majestic and holy and powerful and beautiful God is. For him to care enough about us to make us in his image is truly remarkable.
Jeremy: Yeah it is and it's exactly what king David felt when he wrote Pslams 8. He's writing this Pslams and it's set in the evening time when David, without the modern city lights to fade the sky, was staring into the sky and he sees the majesty of the celestial beings, the stars. And in Pslams 8 King David just writes, astounded about the beauty and glory of God, he says "Oh Lord, our Lord how majestic is your name in the earth, you have set the glory above the heavens" and you can picture him there, looking up. Perhaps you've seen in the dark night sky, the glittering stars and David sees that as the glory of God. And he says in verse 3 "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place" he's absolutely astounded by who God is. And then in comparison David was astounded that God made us to reflect that glory. He says "What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor." that's pretty astonishing. So we know this, that as we see the beauty of humanity, the creativity, the ingenuity, persistence and perseverance, the intricacies of the body and the mind, even the love that people have for one another and for community, these are reflections of our maker in us.It's the imago dei, it's the reflection of the one who made us. But we also see something else when we look at humanity and sadly we see the marring of this beauty don't we?
Jinger: Yeah it's um what we're seeing headlines every single day and it's what we witnessed last week in Minneapolis and something has happened to God’s creation that has messed it up.
Jeremy: Yeah it's called sin *laughs* soon after gods original creation, humanity sinned, ushering pain and death into this world. And this sin takes all forms. You see it in hatred, violence, racism, division, abuse, immorality, on and on. The well of humanity, you could say, has been poisoned. And though we still see the reflections of God in us and in his creations, it's definitely not 100%. Our hearts, bodies, our entire existence, has been effected by sin.
Jinger: So many headlines, like what we saw in The New York times just a few days ago "8 Minutes and 46 Seconds, How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody" become tragically normal and it just makes your heart so sick. And it's not supposed to be that way and we feel that, we feel how unnatural this is. Murder is unnatural, injustice is unnatural and death itself is unnatural.
Jeremy: Yeah it is. And so as Christians living in this sin plagued world, how are we supposed to respond?
Jinger: We weep. I think the first thing we need to say is we should weep with those who weep. People are hurting and we need to stand with them and weep. But we also need to weep at the brokenness around us and it's not just the black community crying out over the death of George Floyd, humanity ought to cry out. It's just so heartbreaking to see this. And George was a man made in the image of God and he was fellow image barer like me, like all of us. And so to see his life taken is such a tragedy.
Jeremy: Yeah that's right. We ourselves grieve and we also grieve with those who are grieving. Jesus wept at the death of his friend Lazarus. He felt the pain of those he loved and yet Jesus knew what he has about to do when it comes to Lazarus, he was about to raise him from the dead. And it's here that I think we need to focus just a moment. As your grieving, facing injustice or death or pain of any sort we need to know that there is one who knows, he truly knows, Jesus knows your pain and he cares about your pain. Jesus Christ is compassionate and compassion is to care. We can look at a headline and say "Oh that's really sad" and move on with our day, but that's not true compassion. True compassion does something, true compassion reacts. And so we see Jesus wept at the death of Lazarus and then he raised him from the dead. And there is one Jesus Christ who demonstrates the greatest compassion imaginable. Jesus Christ came into this world and wept. He read the headlines, he lived the headlines, Christ created this world in harmony and unity but sin decimated peace. It brought bloodshed. But instead of just sitting in heaven Jesus entered earth. He came among us, and moved on his compassion, he actually did something. And we need to pay attention to what he did because what he did is the only ultimate answer to our pain and suffering. So when we think about compassion, and Jing you say 'How do we respond as Christians to the events of last week' and you say 'Well we weep we ourselves weep, we weep with those who weep' but compassion moves beyond the feeling of pain or sympathy in to the realm of action, of doing something. And we look at Christ. He wept, we need to weep but he didn't only weep, he then moved and did something. And this is what Jesus did, listen to the beautiful words of the prophet Isiah, this is Isiah 53, speaking of Jesus, says "He was despised and rejected by man. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief and as one of whom man hide their faces, he was despised. And we esteemed him not. Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smited by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our inequities upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace and with his wounds we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way and the lord has laid on him the inequity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted yet He opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is lead to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement He was taken away and as for his generation, who considered that was cut off of the land of the living, stricken for the transgressions of my people." So we read that and we think "OK what did Jesus do?" well he came to earth to be oppressed, he came to be maligned, he came to be murdered. Why? So that his compassion was not merely a thought but his compassion was action that rescues. Jesus Christ took on sin itself to rescue us from sin. And not just the sin of others impacting us, which is prevalent, but the sin our own hearts. So Jesus Christ can relate to your pain, he can relate to your tears, he can relate to your feelings of anguish. But more than putting an arm on your shoulder and weeping beside you, he actually has accomplished the great salvation by which you and I can be rescued from sin itself and all the effects of sin.
Jinger: Yeah it makes me think of the verses in Titus that you often bring up.
Jeremy: That describes the brokenness of this world and then show the beauty of Jesus's salvation. Yeah I bring them up so often because they’re so spot on and succinct in describing the brokenness of humanity and, like you said, the beauty of Jesus. So those verses, from Titus 3, beginning of verse 3 where the apostle Paul says "We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, lead astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God, our savior, appeared, he saved us. Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the spirit whom he poured down on us richly through Jesus Christ our savior so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." What Paul is saying is that we were broken, we were sin committers, we were committing sin but we were also effected by sin, we were hating others and hated by others, we were slaves to our lust, but something happened but the goodness and loving kindness of god our savior appeared to save us. so that no longer would we be bound by the enslavement of sin and the effects of sin but that we would be rescued. and notice what I just read "that we become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." That there would be this hope that there is beyond the pain of this life. And so Jesus Christ, he knows our pain but he doesn't only empathize helplessly he empathizes yes, but then he enters this world and rescues us.
Jinger: Yeah and for those who are rescued by turning to Jesus in repentance and faith an amazing glory awaits in heaven. A glory where black, white and brown, rich and poor, strong and weak, American, African, Asian, European, where we will all sing in a unified voice to the one who showed true compassion and rescued us.
Jeremy: Yeah. Baby why don't you read that passage that you're talking about from revelation?
Jinger: Yeah it's revelation 5, 9 and 10 and it says "And they sang a new song saying 'worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people in nation and you have made them a kingdom and priest to our god and they shall reign on the earth”.
Jeremy: Yeah it's incredible to see the nations gathered. The, like you said, black, brown, white, African, American, European, all these beautiful nations, all these beautiful people that God has made. You know that's something I think about often in that verse is that there is distinction among us isn't there? And there's beautiful distinction. From the color of our skin to the cultural homes we come from. The languages we share. There’s beautiful distinction in people. And we see that beauty don’t we? And the hope of heaven is that one day we will be joined together. All those who have put their faith and trust in Christ will sing a unified song, in a unified voice, praising Jesus Christ, who came to rescue them from sin, to rescue them from death itself. And so these are dark day we're living in, and we're grieving, but we do not need to grieve as those without hope. Christian, preach the gospel, preach this gospel. Only Jesus offers the change that is big enough, strong enough to save us from hatred, abuse, racism, to save us from sin.
Jinger: That's right.
Jeremy: Well thanks for joining us today for The Hope We Hold podcast. We trust that you were encouraged.
Jinger: And it is our hope that your hope will be in Christ alone.
Four main original characters from my unwritten fiction story, “To Hell With Her.” Please pardon any sloppiness, as these are simply concept sketches!
Tools/Programs: Graphite + Canon Scanner + Paint Tool SAI + Wacom Cintiq 12WX
