We’re all asking questions no one can really answer, and our only responsibility is to try and find out.

Hope in an increasingly hopeless world is shrouded in mystery. But it is there. It is real. It is available. It is a gift—and that is the thing we must all remember.

We cannot bear very much reality. So we go into virtual reality. Strapping on our headsets, we depart from this world to another. We fight fake battles and climb mountains of pixels. We bowl alone, our eyes wrapped in technology takings us far, far away without leaving our chair. The day behind us falls like a blanket to the floor and the day ahead floats out front but we can’t see it. We don’t want to see it. We want an escape. The darkness is too much, so we blind it with light from a thousand sources.

There is a very simple and basic truth I want to share with you. But before I do, I want to emphasize that it’s a truth. It’s not an idea. It’s not a theory. It’s not even a hope. It’s a reality that’s as true as the chair you’re sitting on or the screen you’re reading this on.

Paul says he cannot understand his own actions. There is much controversy over exactly who Paul is referring to in this passage. Throughout verses 7-25, he uses the personal pronoun I. So who is he talking about?

In Romans 7:7-13, Paul talks about the Christian as if he is two people in one body. There is the Moral Self with a high moral compass, wanting to obey the law. Then there is the Law-Breaking Self who breaks the law. Before coming to Christ, we are both of these selves. We are slaves to our desire to live the "right" life, and yet we are slaves to our desire to make our flesh feel good.

No matter how strong we start, time has a way of eroding our zeal. No matter how good the effort is initially, time’s strain wears us out. No matter how righteous the thing is, we grow weary of it. The worst enemy of enthusiasm is time.

The Bible warned us about this. Putting our faith in someone other than Jesus will inevitably lead to disappointment. And we do it anyway. That’s why it hurts so bad when our heroes fall.

The story of a friendship and the necessity that only appears when life falls apart.

It’s in the Christ where once upon a time becomes happily ever after. Maybe not in this life, but surely in the life to come. The good King wins, not by his might but by his weakness, not by his circumstance but in spite of it, not by his force but by his love.