Is That All There Is?

Sunday was the first Sunday of Advent.  We lit the first Advent candle for Hope.  I am wondering this what exactly is hope?  Is it something that people hang on to when all else fails and there is no other option, or is it an ongoing way of being? 

In our funeral liturgy the Committal includes the reassurance, “in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.”   So, to live in hope is to live ‘as if’.  We may not have absolute proof but we live in the faith that God is with us.

The opposite of hope is despair.  If we are in despair, we have given up hope that there is more to life than we are experiencing at present.  Does this mean that it is a life which is grinding you down physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually?  It certainly can be any or all of those.  But it can also be a life which seems to have just doesn’t have any more meaning. 

What comes to mind is the is the song ‘Is That All There Is’ sung by the great Peggy Lee.  Listening to the song again on You Tube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M). This seems to be a song of despair.  The chorus suggests that life is without meaning and so embrace wine, women and song:

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

No, there is not much hope in that approach to life.  However, in the song the singer asks when her lover leaves her, “is that all there is to love?”   She poignantly suggests that she knows what we, the audience, are thinking, if she believes that is all there is to life, why doesn’t she end it?  Peggy replies that she is going to respond, that she is not ready for that final disappointment:

Cause I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you
And when that final moment comes and I'm breathing my last breath,
I'll be saying to myself
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Perhaps there is some hope in that approach but it doesn’t seem like it is truly hopeful.  The idea of living life to the fullest because that is all there is seem to me to be a cry of despair as there is nothing else but what we have now and there is the eternal question, ‘is that all there is?’ 

The answer to that question is to live in the sure and certain hope that we have meaning in life that there is more to life than just breaking out the booze and having a ball.  As a Christian I find the ultimate meaning in the eternal presence of Jesus Christ as my Saviour and in the sure and certain hope of new life.  However, I believe that many people can and do find other sources of meaning.  The meaning comes from living in the knowledge that you are not the only thing that matters; in the knowledge that you are not the centre of the universe.  We have the sure and certain hope that we are all more than that and can live in ways that embrace life beyond breaking out the booze and having a ball.   No, that is not all there is. 

Blessings on that journey which we are all taking; the journey of life.