Sometimes I think there couldn't be a group of people more marginalized by society than the collection of dropouts, losers, and failures on our block at Trinity.
     But then I remember our neighbors at the old folks home across the street.
     As nursing homes go, it is a very good one, and it's residents are probably better off than many. Someone cared enough to get them in there. But no matter how high the quality of care, they know their lives are almost over, their future is nil, most of their friends are already gone.
     No motivational speakers drop by to pump them up about the great future ahead of them or try to get them to dig down deep and "just do it."
     They already did it, and it didn't help.
     Hey, Susan Powter, and Tony Robbins – you never write, you never call. Zig Ziglar never tries to recruit these old people for his seminars.
     In short, according to the value system of the world, old people aren't worth much.
     Occasionally residents at the home get confused and walk away, and we have to lead them back. That's what happened a few nights ago as we were preparing for Bible study.
     An old woman with disheveled gray/blue hair, obviously dressed for bed with baggy teal shorts, a flowered T-shirt, and worn house slippers shuffled down the sidewalk toward the opposite end of our block – a questionable area for anyone to be walking after sunset.
     She said her name was Leena, and she was on a mission. She was carrying a shriveled green onion.
     "I want to go to the market," she insisted. The onion, she explained, was to trade for candy. We kept her talking until orderlies from the nursing home arrived, and we helped them lead her back to her room.
     I can't get this woman out of my mind.
     It's laughable, but she actually believes she could trade her onion for imaginary candy at a grocery store that doesn't exist.
     She reminds me of all of us.
     We'll put our hope in anything – from getting a parking space at the mall to the certainty that our "perfect mate" is waiting for us somewhere out there. We're promiscuous like that. We'll hope in most anything that moves, although socially respectable expectations such as success, career, family health and world peace get all the good press.
     Religion enables this by providing "spiritual principles" through which we can achieve the goals that we hope for.
     It's these "good" hopes that are the most sinister, that blur the line between real faith and civil religion; true spirituality and pagan fertility rite. As in Hosea's time, we have trivialized the Father by making Him chief among many gods.
     It's interesting there is no word in Hebrew for what we call hope in English, "the expectation of some good thing." Instead, the Jews were exhorted to put their trust and confidence in God alone, who exists now and from that position holds the future and the past in His control. All hope was centered on Messiah. Hoping in anything else was idolatry.
     Workin' for the weekend? You might as well be working for Baal.
     This idolatry is so extensive, the rabbis said, "If the names of all the idols in the world were to be enumerated, all the donkeys in the world could not carry them."
     The New Testament expands on this. Faith is the "substance of things hoped for" and it is centered on Christ and His resurrection – both in history and right now in us.
     But the counterfeit hopes come in all shapes and sizes. Some, of course, are more desperate than others.
     *Pat Robertson is hoping for an asteroid to destroy Orlando.
     *President Clinton is hoping for an asteroid to destroy Kenneth Starr's office.
     *Door writers are hoping they get paid for last issue's submissions.
     We shell out money for Viagra, and wait for the fall season of Star Trek to find out if the Dominion will be defeated. Our society has made a business out of looking forward to things – the weekend, vacation, graduation, the opening of the summer blockbuster movies, the winning lottery ticket, the start of the new millennium.
     Heck, we even start anticipating our mileage turning over at 100,000. That should tell us something.
     All this optimism and hope is fueled by our belief that "we deserve a break today" just because we're... us. Our ego and self-esteem demand optimism and hope. But where we see a valuable commodity on the dream exchange, God just sees a worthless, shriveled onion.
     (EDITOR'S NOTE: Remember to pitch this idea to Veggie Tales, the Christian children's video series, for a future episode).
     From God's point of view, we're a world full of zombies "resurrecting" ourselves every day, but never escaping the grave.
     So, OK, can we all put down our onions now? Nobody wants 'em, least of all God.
     That's why Leena the onion lady was so instructive.
     All we can do is lead people back to their rooms and point them to the only hope that is unchanged by time: an empty tomb and Christ in us, the true hope of glory.
     And keep praying that all other hopes are quickly dashed.