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photo: Daniel Daily – © Charming Beard Photography
When there is comfort, there can be no hope.
Hope is for the uncomfortable, the marginalized, the needy. It is a attribute found in the barrios, ghettos, trailerparks and crumbling towns of our nation. And found lacking in the picturesque suburbs, sprawling midtowns and opulent downtowns of our city’s.
Those satiated in the affluence of modernity may say they have hope… but I would argue that the hope they hold is a selfish one. Hope that the work of their hands will continue to reap a harvest, or hope that their children’s lives will be an improvement over theirs (attributed to their sacrifice). This is not the hope of which I am speaking, but a narcissistic hope steeped in nepotism.
The hope that I am speaking of is one of action. It is one that arises out of groaning, and loss, out of grief and wailing. A hope that cannot be ignored because it is not pretentious… because this kind of hope rises altruistically out of the ashes of tragedy.
The pockets of hope found in Haiti, not for the prosperity of a few, but for the redemption of a nation in tumbles. It is the hope found in the prophetic poetry of Jeremiah that reference God as the “Hope of Israel” the “mikveh (heb.) or ground of hope; gathering place of hope, abiding place”. In which the lament of the people is cried out. It is an action statement as well as a descriptive noun — it is a confident expectancy in which the act of hoping and the thing hoped for are intertwined and move as one. Even when object of our hope has gone missing, and God of promise has turned silent.
Those who have suffered and have no assurance for the next day’s bread; those who have tasted failure and have steeped in want… It is those who call out to Hope, in spite of the silence.
Not for earthly gain or appeasement of appetite, but for redemption found by the water’s edge — a place where rest is found, comfort is granted, and time is spent abiding with God, our only Hope.
Hope. It is a rearrangement of posture. A movement from an attitude of want to an position of need. Hope is more than faith. More than trusting you will be caught whilst falling and flailing, it is assurance that you will not be dropped and forgotten, when the world has trampled and ignored you. Hope is progress toward the eternal.
And it is in the eternal that Hope finds a home in our hearts — as we incarnate Jesus amidst the destruction and carnage — to be the Hope for our neighbors, our enemies and our children. Through Christ we have become the Hope of Israel, the icon of confident expectancy, to which we, in our poverty can speak life, through faith, hope and love.
2 Comments on "Hope."
the entire post is beautiful, but those last two paragraphs wrecked me. sam, when i grow up i want to write like you. ok? ok. hey! does love come next?
wrecked me too, Shanti… and yes Love should post sometime today (it was the hardest one to write).