A man sits alone on a park bench, his eyes fixed despondently on the future. It seems closer now than ever before. He remembers his youth when the idea of having your whole life ahead of you would stir such a sense of adventure within him. Now, he finds himself filled with trepidation and sadness. He feels the future is accelerating towards him more rapidly than he’s prepared for.

He can’t help but feel the futility of life on earth. You dream big; you work hard; you face setbacks. He knows that’s life, and he knows what the books say about the importance of bouncing back.  But to what exactly are we bouncing back? The same old cycle that only ends in setback, again? The same old cycle that inevitably leads back to a well-worn park bench?

The world has answers, but it doesn’t have solutions. It has ideas, but it struggles to find truth. Surely life is more than just an existential whirlpool shrieking its way to the depths below.  His sense of foreboding kindles a desire for something more, something beyond. Who will break the cycle?

“He sends from heaven and saves me… God sends forth his love and his faithfulness.”

The words ring in his heart with resonant veracity. Heaven alone has the solution. He longs for—he needs—someone from there to intervene and break the futile cycle of life on earth. His help can only come from the place that hope calls home.

Then, this:

“For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son.”

As he sits on that bench, the Son breaks through the clouds of despondency and warms his soul with the certainty of God’s heaven-sent gift. Jesus Christ, the man from above, who stooped low to lift us up and take us home. Nothing in all the world can match that love or faithfulness.

The man rises, invigorated, and steps forward in gladness.