This past year has been exhausting. I think regardless of where you fall on the political or religious spectrum – it’s been absolutely soul-suckingly exhausting. It almost feels as if 2020 was like “hey we need to kick things up a notch!” while in the midst of a wild weekend in Las Vegas. To say it’s been both insane and bizarre would be putting it mildly. It sort of feels like that one season of Game of Thrones where literally nothing good happens and you’re like “when in God’s name are the good guys going to catch a break?!”
Every day it seems like there’s another shooting of an unarmed person of color, more Covid related deaths, or words uttered by our political leaders that we thought we’d never hear. All the while nothing seems to happen. Change or any sort of progress seem like foreign concepts. Every day just more of the same followed by a sea of angry people shouting into the abyss on social media. It’s difficult not to wonder if the chicken littles of the world aren’t perhaps right this time around. Maybe the sky really is falling.
The word hope keeps popping into my head. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary the definition of the word hope is, “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.” or “something desired or hoped for.” It’s like saying that we really wish for it to happen, but there’s no guarantee.
The way hope appears in the bible seems to be far more optimistic. Hope in the bible is tied more to a sense of trust and patience. Trust in God that God will, in the end, deliver us from evil and usher us into a kingdom of peace and enduring love. Patience in the sense that all too often things that we desire don’t always happen in our time. And that sometimes suffering occurs along the way. The Bible tells us to trust and be patient. We trust that even when the world seems upside down and the bad seems to outweigh the good – that in the end God will prevail – that God’s very nature of Love will win out. That ultimately love will snuff out hate.
It’s that type of hope that keeps me moving forward. It’s that type of hope that keeps me pushing to help create a better tomorrow. I have to believe in that kind of hope. And that God is working through our humans hands to set things right.
