Hope

It’s the first week of advent so I make my morning coffee and then I try to sit and meditate on “Hope,” but the timing just feels a little cruel. I have always loved this season of waiting, the eager anticipation, but this year it just doesn’t resonate like it usually does. There are songs of Bethlehem and the manager, but even the angel costume from the Christmas pageant has a hole in it. Instead I find myself abiding in the 400 year gap. What does it mean to hope in the midst of so much disappointment?

There’s a wedding dress hanging in my guest room collecting dust. And there are thousands of private prayers that feel like they went unanswered. Hearts weren’t changed and lungs weren’t healed and tiny flutters in a hopeful mama’s womb never materialized and dogs don’t live forever so I’m sorry but hope feels about as slippery as the bar of soap in the shower and her suds and my tears seem to disappear down the drain just the same. 

“The people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”

And so. Maybe hope isn’t something solid for our hearts to take hold of, maybe it’s the light that peeks through the cracks the broken things have left behind. So instead of trying to take hold of it maybe we just let it illuminate the path and our hearts while we lean into the darkness, the not knowing, the dreams that never came true and the sorrows that took root in their place instead. In this land of short days and long nights, when all seems lost maybe hope is simply exhaling and saying, “ok.”

Because hope was never meant to be the balloon that carried us blissfuly to our hearts desires, but the anchor that holds within the veil. So I stop making it about my hopes and dreams and rest in His faithfulness, believing we serve a good God who is still at work making all things new. At times it is an act of bravery to let our hearts hope, even more so, an act of courage to let our hearts heal. 

The twinkle lights on my Christmas tree stay lit all day, but you can’t see them gleaming from outside my window until dusk settles. Hope shines a little brighter when all around feels bleak. So I tuck a handful of tissues into my purse before I head into church, and when the hard feelings come- when I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall… this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. 

Our solace in so much darkness is that heaven shines brighter still. 

For further reading:
Lamentations 3:19-33
Isaiah 9:2
Matthew 4:16
Hebrews 6:19