Hope
I used to confuse hope with unbridled optimism. I had this Emily Dickinson-style image of hope as a beautiful bird singing a happy little song, and when I envisioned a person as “hopeful,” I somehow also wanted to describe them as “cheerful.” And while I do believe that hope, optimism, and cheerfulness can be close companions, I’m reminded that the most powerful stories of hope in our sacred scriptures are told while God’s people are not feeling particularly cheerful or optimistic.
The Book of Lamentations is 5 full chapters of despair, desolation, grief, and fear in response to the destruction of Jerusalem. And yet, smack dab in the middle of these desperate, devastating poems, we find these words:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
God’s mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in the Lord.”
It matters that these words of hope don’t come at the very end of Lamentations. Their purpose is not to tie up the suffering of God’s people in a nice little bow with empty platitudes. No, these verses are proclaimed right in the midst of the mess and muck of human sin and brokenness and struggle, much in the same way Jesus’s birth will happen centuries after the poet of Lamentations was writing. These words of hope in Lamentations, are not necessarily full of joy and optimism – they are full of scrappy defiance, rooted in the foundations of God’s eternal promises. As we await the coming Christ child in this season of Advent, may we take a more robust view of hope. Hope can indeed be the source of our joy and cheerfulness. Hope can also be our stubborn act of defiance, our way of proclaiming our faith in the promises of Emmanuel – God who is with us in every joy, every sorrow, and all the holy ordinary moments in between.
~Pr. Sarah Garrett Krey
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