Breathe Hope
I was reflecting on how I might have described the word HOPE while growing up. I don’t mean simply the definition of the word - but rather what it looked and felt like. I remember various occasions tying ribbons around the large maple tree in front of our family home. Satiny yellow ribbons - symbolizing something we prayed or longed for - a way of garnering hope. It feels easy to get stuck in a shiny, perfect version of hope. The kind that is attached to happy endings and specific expectations. Something fragile, precious - like a glossy, mylar balloon that if we are lucky, will lift us up out of our lives & sorrows & grief and carry us away to something more idyllic if only it doesn’t break.
The truth is - those ribbons often stayed on that tree long past even the remote possibility of the expectations that inspired them. The fabric rent by wind, rain, snow - frayed, weathered, torn. Somehow a more apt image for the kind of HOPE we actually felt - the kind that sticks around in the midst of grief & disappointment.
I truly believe God wants us to ‘have life in abundance’ - and I truly believe it is important to name what we want in our prayers: to bring the hostage home, to heal the wounded heart, to restore a loved one’s health, to find a good job, to stop the shootings, to end the war, to free the captives…
There is a fiercely honest, vulnerable power in our asking. We should cry out! Lament! Protest!
The kind of HOPE we are seeking this Advent is not fragile or brittle or weak. It is the kind of hope that isn’t dependent on ideal results. It is playing the long game - powering us to cross deserts & climb mountains. It is the kind that disrupts the way things are, that asks absurd questions, believes unimaginable things, and STAYS with us. No matter what.
In 2020, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer sparked nationwide civil unrest. I remember wondering - in awe - at the depth of the battered, tested, resilient HOPE we must have in order to take to the streets. The kind of HOPE that fuels a revolutionary anger that becomes a revolutionary LOVE. Apathy is an ineffective fuel. Hope on the other hand has the power to ignite. To inspire.
To believe in what is not yet come to pass, that there is MORE beyond what we can sense here & now. This is the hope of advent! The kind of hope that remains right here with us in the midst of everything.
The kind that is passed down generations, from ancestors who believed enough to give us the chance to believe, too. Hope is not a roadmap - it is a beacon, a lamp unto our feet. It will take us to unexpected places via unexpected routes. It guarantees we will not travel alone.
“If we want hope to survive in this world today, then every day we need to pray on, to work on, to fight on, to sing on.” - Sweet Honey in the Rock, lyrics from our reflection song this week.
