David:     I’m looking for a word. Here’s the definition at least according to my dictionary. A feeling that what is wanted will happen.

Karen:     You’re asking me for that word.

David:     Yeah. You want me to say it again?

Karen:     It’s supposed to read your mind. Say it one more time?

David:     A feeling that what is wanted will happen.

Karen:     Oh, well, what comes to mind right away is anticipation. Not that, not the word.

David:     Well, I’m trying to think whether you’re, uh, you’re close.

Karen:     Okay.

David:     Here’s my, my dictionary gives a second definition. Okay. We’re just looking for this word. Desire accompanied by expectation.

Karen:     Desire accompanied by expectation. Hopeful. How about hopeful?

David:     I’m going to give it to you because you’re right on the nose. The word is hope.

Karen:     Hope. Okay.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author, Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     This is going to date us Karen because I don’t think people talk about this anymore. But when a woman, young woman anticipated getting married, she had a hope chest. So, she would put into this chest linens or silverware, clothing, whatever.

Karen:     Household items that she was collecting to set up a household with.

David:     So, she was anticipating.

Karen:     Yeah. She may not have been engaged either. I mean, I think women of that generation kept these hope chests even before they were engaged or had a serious suitor.

David:     Well, hope.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     Hope is one of the big three that’s listed in that first Corinthians 13 chapter on love. It says .”..these three abide faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.” But we’re going to talk about hope. And the reason I want to talk about hope is because of what we’re going through in terms of our own life.

Karen:     We’re actually calling these the pandemic podcast.

David:     Okay.

Karen:     So, we have a huge pandemic that looks like a worldwide pandemic. I don’t know when this has happened in history before. I mean, they refer back to the flu epidemic of 1918 here in our country. But this is a pandemic that seems to be scrambling around the world. It certainly is growing and extraordinarily electrifying proportions here in the States, even as we are podcasting. And this is at the beginning of what we’re told, maybe a month-long siege.

David:     Yeah, it’s getting, it’s going to get worse before it gets better. We have just completed our first week of what we would think of as isolation because we’re in that category of the most…

Karen:     …vulnerable. Yes. We’re oldsters.

David:     Yeah. I’m 83 and you’re…

Karen:     77.

David:     77. Are you 77 already?

Karen:     I am 77.

David:     Okay. We have said, because our kids have told us over again, “Don’t go anywhere.”

Karen:     Well, news reports here in the Chicago area are insisting that elders go under into isolation, stay away from crowds, socially isolate themselves.

David:     So, we have been in the house by ourselves and that’s caused quite a number of adjustments for us, especially as it relates to our three little, well, they’re not a little anymore, but younger grandchildren.

Karen:     We care sat with them twice a week because their mother works. She’s the widow, our son died. And so, we try to step in and help her with the kids as much as we’re able to.

David:     But we’ve been told that’s not a good idea.

Karen:     …not a good idea, they might be carriers.

David:     People all I think all over the country understand it by now. Yeah, right. They’ve been living under a rock.

Karen:     So, this brings a lot of considerations. I’m wondering what sorts of things our listeners are feeling. Are they discouraged? Are they panicky?

David:     Have they lost hope?

Karen:     Have they lost hope? Do they feel like they have no idea how they’re going to make it financially? I mean a lot of people had to step out of their jobs. We had a good economy. Our unemployment rate was the lowest. It’s been, I don’t know, decades. And all of a sudden, things are collapsing and with no end in sight. So how are you feeling, listener? Because you’re the person we’re talking to. We’re wanting to remind you of some things that we all know, but sometimes don’t activate in our Christian lives.

David:     I think that Karen, for us in our first week, it’s been kind of a mixed experience. We have one grandchild, none of those three you mentioned before. We have nine grandchildren altogether and one granddaughter in her early 20s is in Europe. She’s studying abroad.

Karen:     She’s isolated in Paris right now in a one-room apartment with no one around, as far as family is concerned. She’s studying with the American University over there and they’ve gone online, but she’s still isolated. You know, it’s scary because France is in the same place that we are with rapidly growing statistics as far as the coronavirus is concerned.

David:     We have family spread out across this nation from Texas out to California, which has just now said the whole state is to separate out. The people are to not go out of their homes. So, it’s an interesting time and yet in some ways for us, this is our starting our eighth day, it’s been kind of nice.

Karen:     Well, there’s some good things in it. We deliberately have tried to, you know, highlight in our minds what those good things were. Just not having that schedule where every day you have things in it, you have to do where people you have to meet or places you have to go has been a gift. And I think when we have times when they’re quiet, we saw an interview on television with a former Catholic priest and he said, “We used to call this the exercise of solitude going into solitude.” It was a spiritual practice. And he reminded his listeners or his viewers that we should practice the concept of solitude because in solitude, we learn things about ourselves that we didn’t know or we are reminded of things about ourselves that we had forgotten or we have dreams and we have desires, things we’ve not done and those sort of have a chance to bubble up again. So, there’s a lot that is good about this. There are gifts in all of this along with the distress that it’s causing.

David:     I would say that I have tried, not been totally successful, not to watch television that much because television tends to build fears in terms of what’s happening.

Karen:     Well, the reportages is on the pandemic and how many people have gotten sick, where it’s traveling, how fast it’s traveling, how many people have died. And that goes on hour and hour every day because you have a different viewership, you know, through the day and you want to keep them informed.

David:     And what is it when you get caught into this? You just can’t, you cannot not turn on the television. So, there’s a sense in which it is addictive. You just want to know what’s the next rock to fall.

Karen:     Yeah, and I’m guessing that’s where a lot of our listeners are. You just can almost not stay away from the reportage because it is progressive and it’s constant. It is telling blow by blow what’s happening in our country, what leaders are saying, what they’re not saying, you know, where the masks are or where they are not. I mean, it can create a lot of anxiety.

David:     I would say another negative because it’s a huge thing is that we’ve not been able to go to church because the last church service that was held, we didn’t go because…

Karen:     …we started to self-isolate.

David:     Yes. And now churches are not meeting.

Karen:     They’re going to have to stream sermons and finding out all kinds of ways they can keep communicating without face-to-face contact.

David:     That’s been quite an adjustment.

Karen:     Right.

David:     We got a call from one of our ministers and that was wonderful.

Karen:     “How are you doing”? She was calling down through they both were there. So, husband and wife team both calling down through their church list. Now, it’s not a large church, but still I thought if you’re an introvert to call and talk to that many people, even when you’re well-meaning and wanting to pray for them, you’re going to be exhausted after a day of that. But we really appreciated their interest. It was lovely.

David:     As it relates to church, one of the good things that happened was an old friend called and just wanted to talk. Normally I would converse with someone like this for maybe five minutes, then say, it was just wonderful for you to call and then it’s over. But we talked for a long time.

Karen:     Right. This is a very interesting friend. He’s been in responsible positions and development organizations all around the world. So, his world perspective, because this isn’t a pandemic, this is just hitting the States. It’s hitting, for instance, Vietnam and different countries in the southeastern area of the world that he has served in and lived in and worked among those people.

David:     And said, “Oftentimes, when the government’s-imposed restrictions on churches, you can’t have over 50 people or 20 people, got it out of the 10 people. At that point is when the church just blossomed.”

Karen:     Yeah. House church movement. It just grew in Vietnam as a place that he particularly cited. But we know it happened in China as well.

David:     Yes. And those groups just kept multiplying over and over, not just starting new groups, but the groups splitting. And the multiplication was, it was like the coronavirus only.

Karen:     …Except that’s in a good way.

David:     In a good way.

Karen:     And without infection.

David:     And he was excited about what is this going to do with the church.

Karen:     What is the possibility here?

David:     Yeah. So that was very interesting to me.

Karen:     Yeah, to get his viewpoint.

David:     And I was glad for that. So, I think it’s been good for us as a family, because our family has said, “We don’t get together enough, we need to converse more.” And so…

Karen:     …and had actually said, you know, we can use the zoom app on our computers and we can all talk to one another. And that was a conversation that began a year or two ago. And we have never activated it. So, this week, that got activated. I figured out how to use zoom. It wasn’t really that complicated.

David:     But it wasn’t we who started.

Karen:     It was our adult children. Right.

David:     If it had depended upon…

Karen:     …us…

David:     …the me of the week. It never ever would have happened because that’s not where my head is.

Karen:     Yeah.

David:     I was raised in a totally different world. But now we’re ready to have our first extended family…

Karen:     … zoom call.

David:     Zoom call.

Karen:     And they have committed themselves to doing it once a week, Sunday afternoons is when we’re going to start. So, it’s pretty exciting.

David:     Everyone will be there, except the nurses in the family.

Karen:     Right.

David:     They’re occupied.

Karen:     We have three who are in the front line, so in our extended family…So, our prayers go up for them continually. We’re concerned for them.

David:     Well, anyway, that’s one of the positive things that has happened, I think, in terms of family. But I also think in terms of neighbors. And we’ve always tried to reach out to neighbors. But now you’re taking it to a whole new level.

Karen:     We live in kind of an isolated situation on our block. We have easements on either side of our property that surround us with woods. We don’t own it, but it’s nice. You go into our house, and you feel like you’re there.

David:     They are city easements that nobody can build.

Karen:     And they’re all wooded, as I said before. But I’ve had just a prayer nudge to pray for our neighbors. And we haven’t been as involved with them as we would like, partly because we just had so much going on our lives. And, you know, radio deadlines, daily ones and television shows and pastors’ conferences and creating adventure material, a whole publishing arm of our ministry. So, we’re without that now. And my heart has gone to, well, now let’s see if we can develop some relationships with the people who live so close to us up and down the block. And one side of the street is the back side of the houses on the other side of the street. So, I’m just talking about our side of the street. So, I’ve been praying about it. And the Lord kind of nudged me during this pandemic crisis to just put a little care package in each of their mailboxes. So, I thought about it.

David:     I don’t know if you’re supposed to do that or not.

Karen:     Well, I’m going to. I will spray antiseptic on it and wipe them down and make sure my hands are clean before I do it and let them know it that these have been made clean.

Karen:     We’re pretty good friends with a postman who may not say anything. We stick things in the boxes. Anyway, go ahead.

Karen:     Anyway, so this letter is the one I composed. You want me to read the letter?

David:     Yeah, I thought it was great.

Karen:     Ok. Dear neighbors, I have washed and sanitized my hands while handling this letter. We have lived on Hawthorne Lane for the last 40 some years. We’ve also been in ministry all our married lives, almost 59 years come June. That means we have specialized in the people business all those days. And because of that, I just wanted to reach out with a reminder that in the midst of bad, rough, or inconvenient times, we do not have to be afraid.

We’ve also experienced rough stuff. 20 or so years back, our national radio ministry, which aired daily on some 500 religious’ outlets, came under attack by some ultra conservative folk, which led to a decline in our donor revenues. We needed $10,000 a day to pay for our 45 some staff in our radio bill. Income decline to $3,000 a day. This quickly led to a debt of $2,600,000.

We closed down the media outlets while we were mortgaging our house, the brown one, two houses from Route 59 up the street. How does that couple get through this? By choosing to believe that there is a good God acting on our behalf, despite what the circumstances seem to be saying. Five years ago, our youngest son contracted a rare lymphoma and after a gruesome struggle with cancer, died of the treatments as much as from the disease. He left a wife, who is a wonder woman, and three small children ages six, four and six months. How do parents get through an event that threatens to tear apart the fabric of their belief system, if not their marriage? Same answer.

However, that experience of finding God, not only in the everyday but in the raw passages of life, has been fueled by what we have come to call the God Hunt. This is more than just the practice of positive thinking, though it is certainly that. It is not a denial that life can hand us wretched moments. It certainly does. It is a system of living that helps us see what is beautiful in every day. We are concerned that some of you may be battling with anxiety, may feel that you are going to lose everything, have had too many life-blows in this pandemic with its accompanying financial collapse is threatening to put you under the last blow. Or you have no one in your life you can count on and do not need any more isolation. This book may help, and I have included a copy of the God Hunt.

But more than that, we the resident ministering couple up the hill in Hawthorne Lane are just a phone call away. Feel free to contact us. Hang in there. Karen Mains

I have her contact information on her stationery. So that is something easy to do. And I think it conveys a sense of love and care. And then we are just slipping into all the mailboxes on our street with a little note that said this has been appropriately hand sanitized.

David:     I think that is great. You never would have done that otherwise.

Karen:     No, I never would have done that. I thought about it, and I prayed about it, but I just didn’t have a means. In fact, it did drop under the letters across the street to invite neighbors to get together and three responded. So, I think I just needed to wait a little bit longer for this crisis. But that effort, which wasn’t necessarily successful, did bring a couple of Christian couple to us who are very involved in the development across the street. So, I’m going to contact them and see what they’re doing during this crisis too.

David:     I’m going to put into a sentence what it is we’re saying. Okay?

Even in difficult circumstances, it is important to hope in the Lord. Here’s a scripture that was meaningful to me even as we’ve gone through this first week in isolation and this pandemic has affected our lives quite profoundly, good things, difficult things. The scripture, this is out of lamentations, partly I’m going to this because I’ve been studying a lot in Jeremiah lately. How much do you know about Jeremiah?

Karen:     I know he had a rough life. He was a prophet. It was not easy. Prophet of the Lord in the time when Israel was far away from God.

David:     He had to say tough messages to Israel. This is after he wasn’t hated at all. The whole nation fell. Many of the leaders were deported to a country far away.

Karen:     In forced exile.

David:     Jeremiah stayed because the enemies took a liking to him and understood that he had been telling the people to surrender and God will protect you. But they didn’t obey that at all. But at the same time, he has watched his whole nation collapse. And these are his words, and you’ll recognize them.

“I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness, and the gall. I will remember them and my soul is downcast within me; yet this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.” That’s what got me started on this whole thing of hope. .”..therefore, I have hope, because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.” Those are verses that a lot of people have claimed as their own.

Karen:     …and memorized. I think that’s wonderful.

David:     So, they’re wonderful verses. I don’t know that people understand the context of the book. Jeremiah obviously wrote his prophecy, and the book that follows in the Bible is the Book of Lamentations, the book of lamenting, if you put it that way. And he’s lamenting because his nation has collapsed, it has gone into captivity, and he is remaining with the people who have been left there.

Karen:     With the remnant who are still in Israel.

David:     It’s the poor people. The poor who have no holdings. They just are told to work the land. I want to read those same verses, but I want to read them in the context of what he’s writing.

Karen:     So, this you’re reading a little bit ahead.

David:     I’m starting with the first part of the chapter, which is chapter 3 of Lamentations, and reading up to those verses I’ve read before. So, it gives you the context and the feelings of the man. Okay?

“I am a man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.” That’s God’s wrath. “God has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light. Indeed, he has turned his hand against me again and again all day long. He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones. He has besieged me and surrounded me with bitterness and hardship. He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead. He has walled me in so I cannot escape. He has weighed me down with chains.”

And these are literal chains. I mean, he has been a captive for years. “Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. God has barred my way with blocks of stone. He has made my past crooked like a bear, lying in wait, like a lion in hiding. He has dragged me from the path and mangled me and left me without help. He…” that’s God again, “drew his bow and made me the target for his arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver. I became the laughingstock of all my people. They mocked me in song all day long. He has filled me with bitter herbs and seated me with gall.”

This next verse is incredible. “He has broken my teeth with gravel. He has trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace. I have forgotten what prosperity is. So, I say my splendor is gone and all that I had hoped for from the Lord. I remember my affliction and my wandering.” Now these are the verses that I read before. “The bitterness and the gall. I will remember them, and my soul is downcast within me. Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope. Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed. For his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. Great is your faithful. I say to myself, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will wait for Him.”

Karen:     Powerful, powerful stuff, isn’t it?

David:     It puts it in a whole different context. They’re not just a verse to memorize, but the reality of his situation. You begin to understand it.

Karen:     You know what’s intriguing to me about that passage, that whole context in history that you’ve given, is that there was a choice he made.

David:     Yes.

Karen:     Despite that catalog of awful things, they were awful. He’s a prophetic poet in the way he uses language. I can see why people got angry with him because he’s so communicative. But he made a choice to hope. There was an intentionality there that I think when we read these passages, we sort of just think, well, it comes. We’ll put our hope in the Lord. No, you have to sit down and say, “Despite this, despite having our jobs closed down; despite not having any pay that’s coming because our jobs have been closed down; despite the fact that we’re going to be isolated for what looks like months and maybe more and do not know how we’re going to make it, I am going to choose and lead my family to choose to put their hope in the Lord. We’re going to say he’s compassionate. We’re going to say he loves us. He will not turn his face on us when we cry to him.”

David:     We will see his hand from these God-hunt sightings.

Karen:     We will see his hand in the God-hunt sightings. Every day we will look for him. In our case, I’ve written down God-hunt sightings for 40 years. In my journals, I’m convinced that God works in our lives. So, that’s what we’re going to do. And then we’re going to extend ourselves out of this kind of intentional belief system, giving ourselves to hope, looking to the Lord. And then we’re going to write letters and little cards to our neighbors. They’ve got extra toilet paper. I’ll put a thing of toilet paper in every mailbox. Whatever I can do to show you that we’re living within a belief system that is buoying us up and we want to share that with you.

David:     I think it’s really well said. Here’s the sentence again that I’ve been working with. Even in difficult circumstances, it is important to hope in the Lord. So, I’m going to keep informed. I have said to myself, “I will keep track of how much I watch television because it is addicting.”

Karen:     Yeah, it’s addicting.

David:     And thank goodness because on television, they’re beginning to show some of the good stories of what people are doing, how they’re rising, how they’re showing hope. I think that’s a wonderful thing. But I will also make sure that what is informing me as to how I’m going to live is my hope in the Lord; that He will do what He wants to do. In fact, Karen, I was reading the other day, and something just popped. I’ve done a lot of study in Revelation as I’ve used even those studies on our podcast. But I was in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and just reading Scripture in my normal times and I hit a word and I thought, golly, what does that word mean now? I need to check that out again. This is from Luke chapter 21. Jesus says, .”..there will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places and fearful events and great signs from heaven.”

So, he says, great and it amplifies three words. Earthquakes, famines, and pestilences. What in the world is a pestilence again? You know, it’s not a word I use normally when I talk with people. So, you look it up and I’ll give you what I got from the dictionary anyway.

A pestilence is any virulent or fatal category of infectious disease, especially one of epidemic proportions. I don’t have my study here. My books are elsewhere, so I can’t get to them. So, I can’t say, okay, what is that in the Hebrew? But when I looked up what pestilence was in terms of my English dictionary, that’s the definition. That’s the very thing we are going through now.

Karen:     Right.

David:     So, I’m saying to myself, this is something that God is aware of and maybe, just maybe, which is an exciting thing to me because all my life I’ve heard about Jesus is returning. And I’d say probably as a habitual routine without fail. I say, “Lord, maybe this day is the day you will return. I don’t know, but that would be wonderful.” I remember my grandmother, Myers. Years ago, I would have been probably in junior high, and she was sick; and she was saying, “I was hoping that I would live until Jesus returned.”

Well, now I’m the older person. I’m the patriarch in our family. And I have thought maybe Jesus would return during my lifetime. I’m not predicting that. I’m just saying that would be…

Karen:     … would be wonderful.

David:     But I read that, and I thought, wow, that’s another one of those signs that Jesus said. Look for these times. He talks about the rising of the seas. You know, people’s hearts fearful because what’s happening in the world. Talking about drowning, drowning our big cities. What are we going to do about it? I don’t know, but I said, “Lord, you know, I know the end days from my own understanding of scripture. Not going to be easy days for people. But to think maybe we are the stewards on duty in those days immediately prior to the return of our Lord.”

Karen:     In being called, whether he comes…

David:     You know, whether he comes to the earth.

Karen:     Being called to be faithful and to call people to hope during difficult times.

David:     Yes, people of hope. That’s what we want to be of any people in the world. Those who follow Jesus, ought to be people of hope. So basically, I’m going to give a benediction. I know.

Karen:     He’s a minister at heart.

David:     If I were in a congregational setting, I would say, “Let’s stand”, and then I would lift my hand over my head like I’m doing now.

Karen:     So, you’re going to do it for listening audience. So, listen up.

David:     This is Romans 15:13. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” And all God’s people said Amen.

Karen:     And I only have one thing to say. Why don’t you read it one more time?

David:     Sure. “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” It’s a good way to end our time together. God be with you, my friend.

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.