This question came up in a women's Bible study at church this month. It's simple enough, yet it leads me down a path of reflection that begs all sorts of questions about the qualities of my own spirit and the nature of God's action in the world.
Surely, there have been times when no outside source gave me a cause or the ability to hope, yet I was still able to watch and wait for a transformation that I believed could, and would, arrive. On the other hand, there have been times when the roots of hope only burrowed their way into the dense darkness in the center of my chest because a beloved one (usually my mother or father), persisted in loving me until my dry and thirsty heart cracked open enough to let hope in.
Whether hope has sprung up, quiet and solitary, or has been coaxed into life by another, I have never felt like I am in any way its source. It feels like a separate thing, a foreign thing. I don't understand hope, but I welcome the gift of it.
I also ache for that gift to live in others. This week, many people I love prepare to remember and celebrate the life of a friend who seems to have been living apart from hope - so much so that he didn't know how to keep living anymore and chose not to. If we don't create our own hope, where does it come from? Is it a gift from God? If it is, why doesn't God give enough to everyone? Why doesn't God water and tend even the driest deserts of despair to offer life and growth everywhere? Why should anyone have to live without hope?
Perhaps this is an echo of the same cry of "Why?" that comes to our lips in the wake of the destruction and death in Japan...
It is a heavy thing to love enough that we ache for something beyond our power to create or control. Perhaps the best thing we can do is look for the seeds of hope in ourselves and others and tend them and invite them to live and grow. And maybe that's enough...
I was walking outside with a friend yesterday who pointed down at my feet at a shoot of ivy, asking if I'd seen them popping up lately. "Something has happened in the last few days," he said. I hadn't noticed any change outside my front door, hadn't seen the new life right under my feet, but something different - the moisture or temperature or chemical composition of the soil or air - has coaxed it out of the ground.
Hope is a mystery. In this time when new life begins to spring forth in the Northern hemisphere...In this season of the Church's life when the living water offered by Christ begins to flow in torrents towards the saving flood of the resurrection and Easter baptism...In these days, this mystery pulls at my heart.
And even though there is still death and darkness...Even though we may still be in the desert, hope lives in me today. I don't understand it, but I am grateful.
I also ache for that gift to live in others. This week, many people I love prepare to remember and celebrate the life of a friend who seems to have been living apart from hope - so much so that he didn't know how to keep living anymore and chose not to. If we don't create our own hope, where does it come from? Is it a gift from God? If it is, why doesn't God give enough to everyone? Why doesn't God water and tend even the driest deserts of despair to offer life and growth everywhere? Why should anyone have to live without hope?
Perhaps this is an echo of the same cry of "Why?" that comes to our lips in the wake of the destruction and death in Japan...
It is a heavy thing to love enough that we ache for something beyond our power to create or control. Perhaps the best thing we can do is look for the seeds of hope in ourselves and others and tend them and invite them to live and grow. And maybe that's enough...
I was walking outside with a friend yesterday who pointed down at my feet at a shoot of ivy, asking if I'd seen them popping up lately. "Something has happened in the last few days," he said. I hadn't noticed any change outside my front door, hadn't seen the new life right under my feet, but something different - the moisture or temperature or chemical composition of the soil or air - has coaxed it out of the ground.
Hope is a mystery. In this time when new life begins to spring forth in the Northern hemisphere...In this season of the Church's life when the living water offered by Christ begins to flow in torrents towards the saving flood of the resurrection and Easter baptism...In these days, this mystery pulls at my heart.
And even though there is still death and darkness...Even though we may still be in the desert, hope lives in me today. I don't understand it, but I am grateful.
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