It is curious to me that Hope is the first week and Preparation is the second. I would think the order would begin with Preparation and then follow up with Hope, Joy and Love.
On further reflection I realize Hope is what draws us in to the magical season of Advent. The name, Advent, comes from the Latin words “Ad” which means “to” and the word “Venire” which means come. Spliced together, we get the word advent, to come, and we wait for what is to come.
Hope. It is such a common word for us, we use it multiple times a day most days. I hope the Broncos get their act together. I hope the weather is nice this weekend so the roads will be good. I hope to be able to get the gumbo caked on my truck washed off before the storm arrives today. I hope my wife makes chicken fried steak this week. I hope to see Jane this weekend. I hope my close friends at work will continue to buoy me up during the week. I hope my mother’s health holds through the holidays so she can enjoy the season.
We don’t just use hope for the incidental things that pop day day to day. Hope is, after all, a theological virtue so it carries significance beyond casual use. Hope is what sustains us through the thumps and bumps that interrupt our passage through life. When I look at my image in the mirror in the morning and I find myself looking through the image of what I see to wonder who or what I am or what I have become, hope is what brings me back to contact with my heart and soul. In the night, when what the great Protestant theologian Paul Tillich calls “thoughts of ultimate concern” flood over me and roll me around like a pebble in a rushing river, Hope is what waits for me as the tumbling ends and I begin to make sense of haunting dreams that don’t just wait for sleep to come but can terrifyingly visit me in wakefulness. Hope is what feeds my faith to the sure and
When we try to understand how hope works, we learn the answer lies somewhere beyond our capacity to capture. Henry Nouwen says this,
“Hope is willing to leave unanswered questions unanswered and unknown futures unknown. Hope makes you see God's guiding hand not only in the gentle and pleasant moments but also in the shadows of disappointment and darkness.”
In his words, we should not be concerned by the mysteries of hope but to turn our attention to seeing God’s hand in our life. As I type this, a convention of Blue Jays and Magpies are hazing the feeders I stuffed with dog food cubes and un-shelled peanuts. It is a pleasing moment and I am comforted by the energy and conversation they bring. Since I have been away for several days, I hoped they would come promptly when I put out the food and whistled for them to come. Their presence connects to nature to me in a very curious way. I had not expected to become so closely bonded to them when I started putting out food last spring.
What is interesting is I feel as though I am celebrating creation and giving the creator praise by offering nourishment to his creatures. He did not need to create beauty and wonder, nor did he need to create an ability and desire for us to embrace those things and to wander in wonder but he did. As suggested by Nouwen, I see God’s guiding hand in this. Two weeks ago, wracked by fear and anxiety, it was difficult to settle into the moment, watch the birds and find hope when I needed hope to pull myself back to a path forward and to remind me fear, anxiety and worry are pointless. As Quoheleth noted in Ecclesiastes, I was busying myself about with things of no concern and yet I was wasting a tremendous amount of energy for no good reason. I hoped, falteringly at first, the time of uneasiness and concern would pass as it always and it did. It faded. My hope was fulfilled.
Hope is not a constant in our lives, it comes from a willingness to trust and most of us begin to trust in little tiny steps. I don’t remember a time when I did not have the capacity to trust, even if only a tiny bit, it was a virtue my family demonstrated for me every day and they have never wavered enough in their faith to lose the trust they all spent a lifetime building. No matter what challenges they faced even when afflicted by terrible illnesses like strokes and respiratory diseases like COPD, they never lost their ability to trust in God, to have faith that in the end, everything would be alright. Their hopes of delivery into a life beyond anything we can imagine were answered and we had the privilege of being witnesses.
In the last hours before my grandfather literally suffocated from emphysema, I took my grandfather's hand and asked him if he was afraid. Words were hard for him to speak by that time, struggling for breath, he shook his head and grasped my hand a little tighter. I leaned closer in to him told him choirs of angels were waiting for him and he nodded his head in response and squeezed my handed even tighter. Behind me my mother and grandmother listened and watched while I walked as far down the road to light with my grandfather as I was permitted. My cousin got up, rushed for the door left the room. She was not able to accept what was coming and she was destroyed by it. Hope eluded her then and still does often when she needs hope the most.
Two years later, sorrow struck my wife and I when we lost a child in the last trimester on the seventh day of December. The reading that day was this same reading about John the Baptist. In the days to follow, I thought I was holding tightly to the trust I needed to not lose hope, but that is not what happened. I pretended I still had hope but deep down there was only despair and a hurt that would not heal. The damage I caused to myself was nearly enough to destroy me but in time, through prayer offered by my wife and others, I was redeemed and brought home to where hope could rise up again out of the ashes of faith burned away by anger. 12 years ago on this same Sunday I was visited by hope brought on the wings of forgiveness and the ability to look at sorrow and not despair. It has never left me as long as I remember to ask for it and offer gratitude when it rises up to support me.
I ask you to think. Have there been times in your life when your faith carried you far enough through adversity to where you could find hope? Has the experience strengthened you? Has the power of your hope allowed you to feed the trust and hope of another? Did you recognize that through your actions you willed the good of another?
Next week we will consider the next them, preparation which can also be understood to be prophecy.
Until, then the may this be a season of great hope for us all.
No comments:
Post a Comment