Hope of sinew

 

Way back on November 30^th of last year (which feels like forever ago), we lit a candle of hope.  That wasn’t just some ritual for Advent, it was a prophetic prayer for our lives every day this year.  Hope is not just wishful thinking.  Frederick Buechner said, “For Christians, hope is ultimately hope in Christ. The hope that he really is what for centuries we have been claiming he is. The hope that even though sin and death still rule the world, he somehow conquered them. The hope that in him and through him, all of us stand a chance of somehow conquering them too. The hope that at some unforeseeable time and in some unimaginable way he will return with healing in his wings.”

 

Walter Bruggemann says this, “Hope in gospel faith is not just a vague feeling that things will work out, for it is evident that things will not just work out. Rather, hope is the conviction, against a great deal of data, that God is tenacious and persistent in overcoming the deathliness of the world, that God intends joy and peace. Christians find compelling evidence, in the story of Jesus, that Jesus, with great persistence and great vulnerability, everywhere he went, turned the enmity of society toward a new possibility, turned the sadness of the world toward joy, introduced a new regime where the dead are raised, the lost are found, and the displaced are brought home again.”

Slowly savor this blessing of hope by Jan Richardson:

So may we know the hope that is not just for someday
but for this day— here, now, in this moment that opens to us:
hope not made of wishes but of substance,
hope made of sinew and muscle and bone,
hope that has breath and a beating heart,
hope that will not keep quiet and be polite,
hope that knows how to holler when it is called for,
hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause,
hope that raises us from the dead—
not someday but this day, every day, again and again and again.

Now it is your turn, add questions, quotes, and random thoughts on your sheet with “HOPE” written at the top.  How is hope different than wishful thinking for you?  What percolated when you read Jan Richardson’s prayer of blessing in your soul?  How can hope have a soft heart and a strong backbone in the world today?  Keep playing and praying the word “hope” on this first Wednesday of a brand-new month.   Amen.