Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Every Day In A Life

"And how could we endure to live... if we were 
always crying 
for one day or one year to come back 
- if we did not know that every day in a life 
fills the whole life 
with expectation 
and memory 
and that these are that day?"
~ C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Inviting the Sun

“Maybe I’m a fool
Repeatedly
Inviting the sun to shine at night,

But I can hardly help myself
See

And, I’m not even sure it’s not right.
So, for the now I’ll pine,
Prayerful, content,
Knowing the dawn must be ‘soon.’
Not knowing, really,
What that even meant,
But thanking Him for this moon.”


~ Michael, “To: The Sun… With Love.”




(Thanks for letting me repost, macamidedieu.)  

Friday, December 26, 2014

Open Every Door

“Not knowing when the dawn will come
I open every door;”
~ Emily Dickinson, Dawn

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Proclaiming Hope

It’s Christmas Eve and I’m sitting cozy and full in my family’s living room.  I’m wearing an elegant green t-shirt I got this year.  It has a picture of an angel soaring and singing to the world about hope, Hope that is swirled across the front of the shirt in glittering gold.  This year I don’t just want to wear hope; I want to be like the angel, proclaiming hope. 

And this year it’s been easy for two reasons.  First, I see hope everywhere.  Second, I see desperate need for hope everywhere.  All over I see God faithfully pursuing people.  I see Him giving extravagant gifts in tiny moments.  In so many lives I see people on the edge of giving up, wanting to, tired, struggling in the dimness of life to focus on truth.  Truth that God is.  That God cares.  That though it seems long, God answers. 

So here’s the theme of my Christmas cards and clothing and my pleading prayers for my friends and my world:

Moments after the need for a Savior broke our bloodline, God promised that the Serpent would be crushed by the Seed of the Woman.  More prophecies came here and there along the way.  Maybe Eve thought her firstborn would be the one.  Maybe Abraham thought in his own day he would see salvation.  Hebrews 11 runs through their names like a chant of people road-worn but promise-serving.  God was good to remind them each He had not forsaken them, that He was still near and still powerful even though the great fulfillments lay over the horizon.  These all died in faith, not receiving the promises, but duly honored in the memories of God’s people for faith in the God who is worthy, the God who does reward those who diligently seek Him. 

4000 years go by between Eve’s fatal bite, deceived by the whispering of the enemy of God.  And one of my favorite parts of the Christmas story is the glimpse we get into the lives of people around them: people too soul-poor to quit hoping for the Savior, no matter how long He took to come.  Simeon the prophet waits in the temple for his eyes to see the light of the world in human flesh.  Anna meets Jesus and then the old widow runs to a group of people – what was this group like?? – who had been waiting.  Waiting.  After 4000 years of no Messiah yet, they dared to wait. 

And Jesus came.  The song says “the weary world rejoices”.  Jesus did come.  After all.  It had been so long that some forgot.  That those who remembered were so tempted to doubt God wouldn’t come through.  But He did.  Because He so loved the world. 

Hope is like that.  After a long time of not happening, something finally does.  Be on the watch for it. 


Merry Christmas!  

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Imprisoned

"A prison cell in which one waits, hopes, 
... and is completely dependent 
on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened 
from the outside, 
is not a bad picture of Advent." 

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Sunday, December 7, 2014

Spins On

"Until such a time as the world ends, 
we will act as though it intends to spin on." 
~ The Avengers

Again

I disagree, that it is insane to do the same thing over again and again, expecting different results.  I think this is very often what hope is.  Hope is not as simple as, "If I do A, the next thing that happens will be B."  It is rather, "If I do A, at some point B will happen - at least, B isn't impossible, and B is what I want to happen, and A does have some likelihood to contribute to it happening - and A is less likely to get in the way of it happening."  And sometimes, hope is doing A every moment until that moment when B arrives.

We humbly acknowledge that our idea of what constitutes "results" might be shortsighted. A parent sings the ABC's to their child every night for a week, and the child still doesn't know what letter comes after "c".  But sing the ABC's hundreds more times, and the child will know.  Is it insane to keep trying after that first week?

This course of action is especially hopeful, I think, when other people are involved.  The child must be waited on to learn.  God must be waited on to act.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

More Wonderful

God creates out of nothing.
Wonderful, you say.
Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful:
He makes
saints 
out of
sinners.


~ The Journals of Kierkegaard 
as quoted in Relevant Magazine
emphasis mine

Sunday, October 26, 2014

Mountains Yet Unmoved

I pray, 
and I try to fill my vision with beauty, 
but here I still am, 
struggling. 
True, I'm praising God 
for breath 
and daily bread 
- and if that is all I can think of, 
it is still a defiant faith, 
a mustard-seed of faith, 
and maybe, 
I hope this is true, 
maybe mountains will still move…

Saturday, October 11, 2014

How To Help Friends In Their Hope

Pray about what they’re hoping.  This is different from praying for the thing they want.  It is different from praying for their hope.  It’s a sort of combination of all of it and an openness to God using you to reveal something about how they should hope. 

Help them to remember that God really is good:
            Remind them of precepts from Scripture.  (Every good gift is from above.)
            Testify of your personal experience.     
            Ask them or remind them about their personal past experiences.
            Speak of general human experience, like the rain falling on the just and the unjust. 
            Use specific examples of God’s goodness from the Bible or other history.

Help them to stay humble about what they deserve. Basically, as sinful humans saved by grace, we don't really deserve anything.  Because of God's mercy we are not consumed.  Jesus gave His perfect life for us.  Anything extra is a major bonus.  Hope does really well when we remember to hope for the glory of God; that's something we can always rejoice in.  

Tell them true things.  Hope is based on truth.  You can speak truth against lies or just talk about the ordinary true things that come to your attention, like the color of the cup in their hand.

Pray with them for their spirit and emotions.  Praying together is pretty incredible in too many ways to describe here.  I highly recommend you try it. 

Encourage them to do what is always right: speaking well of God, giving God their desires, loving their neighbor, being grateful…

Support them in decisions based in faith – even if circumstances don’t seem favorable.  Many people around them will be reminding them of worldly wisdom.  Living in hope includes a confidence in a fact many people leave out: God is real.  Cheer for them when they include God in their decision-making.

Remind them of the spiritual reality of God’s work in them, in your relationship, in the world.  Even when we can’t see things, God is active.  He is able to change hearts.  He uses us in each other’s lives to build each other up.  Speak of how you have seen God working, or even just how you believe He is working. 

Don’t discourage doubt that could be reconsideration or correction from God – but make sure that even the reconsideration is in faith and based in God’s truth more than in their strength or understanding.  This is a tricky one.  I believe that hope is surrendered to God, leaving the rights in God’s hand to give us something else or correct us for wrong desires.  It’s important to not get too cocky.

Talk to them about what they’re believing and hoping and what doubts they’re having – especially listen to them. 

Promise to be there to rejoice or weep when the outcome is made known.  Hope can feel really lonely. Let them experience your love.

Remind them what the Bible teaches about prayer.  For example, we know that when we ask according to God's will, He hears us.  We know Jesus taught His disciples to keep praying and not give up.  We know that an ordinary man like Elijah prayed for a drought and it didn't rain for over three years.  But be personal.  Tell them things you each have learned about prayer from the Bible but accompanied by relevant experience.  

Remind them that regardless of the outcome, the investment of prayer and faith is not wasted.  God is with us, as we wait on Him.  No time spent talking to God, yielding to Him, doing His will – is wasted, even if we don’t get what we thought we were “earning”.  (Hope isn’t about earning.)  But it is worth the struggle, the pain, the work, the time.  God brings forth fruit in our lives when we walk with Him.  That’s an exciting thing. 

Sunday, September 21, 2014

Little Things

So often now my hope is for big things: that God will sanctify His Church, bring revival, grant repentance to Christians so caught in mires of sin and discouragement, set in motion and preserve life-long love stories, for people desperately ill to be healed.  But I find myself overlooking hope for little things.  Can I hope that God will give me wisdom to see how to act in difficult relationships?  Is there hope that a friend who spoke critically will be edifying the next time we speak?  Do I hope for my sniffles not to turn into a cold?  Can I encourage my friends to hope that their children won't be so disobedient today?

Saturday, September 13, 2014

Touch of Wonder by John Blase

"Contentment that cancels out hope is merely a mask for resignation."
~ John Blase, Touch of Wonder

"Hope, the Greatest Indeterminacy of All"

Tonight I watched an episode of Joan of Arcadia, a now-cancelled CBS television series.  In it, God shows up and tells Joan to plant a garden on her high school's property as a physics project. But all her usual study-friends desert her. The flunkies throw their contraband cigarette butts and empty slushy cups onto it. Joan feels like it's all a failure and she has no idea what's going on. But people notice the momentum of the project and start helping. Eventually there's a garden gnome made out of garbage, mums to attract pollinating bees, and Judith - who's been struggling with feeling isolated - joins in at the last minute, planting flower bulbs deep in the soil. They read their assignment's premise aloud to their class, "We offer our garden as an inquiry into the nature of hope, the greatest indeterminacy of all." As tends to be the case with a commitment to hope, just as the class is meditating on that poetic line, a bulldozer shows up to destroy the garden. But Judith stands to her feet in front of it, until the class rallies behind her cheering her name, and she's carried out of the way of the machinery. Then God tells Joan 1) that the crocuses and tulips her friend was planting will sprout and bloom in the spring even though the ground got bulldozed, and Judith knew that; and 2) that even though the garden was destroyed, what Joan planted and tended by being involved in "the process", grew. The scene cuts to a picture of Judith smiling.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Beyond Hope

I read once that Tolkien wrote with the pessimism of the pagan poets [1].  They uphold honor in despair, dying well, the heroic quest at the cost of losing everything you love.  But I read Tolkien and see hope scribed into every chapter.  No light, whimsical child’s hope: Tolkien’s hope is not ignorance of all things capable of clouding the good.  It’s a “fool’s hope,” [2] where anyone can see that in all likelihood, if things go on as they are, the fool will be disappointed.  In Tolkien, the fools know themselves to be fools.

Elven-King Fingolfin’s story weighs on the side of hopelessness.  The Silmarillion describes him as “fey” [3] when he challenges Melkor himself, living up to the epic’s heroic virtues.  What hope has an elf against a Vala?  But the Vala ought to be contended, resisted, fought.  Though the high king of the Noldor (elves) finally fell, his fight was not without effect.  The Dark Lord Melkor limped forever after.

At first reading, it seems that Aragorn commends this sort of despairing courage when he instructs his friends, “There are some things that it is better to begin than to refuse, even though the end may be dark.” [4]  But Gandalf, the wizard who knows his life-encompassing hope is foolish, lends a bit of insight early on.  Recognizing he is a fool, he embraces humility.  Do you hear it in Gandalf’s words? “Despair, or folly?  It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt.  We do not.  It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.” [5]  He acknowledges that he may not have all the facts.  Indeed, thinking that he knew what the end would be was the prideful downfall of Denethor, who let his enemy select the facts he discovered, and so turn him to despair, and madness.  Tolkien’s works regularly discourage the assumption that we know the future.

He also discourages despair.  I know it doesn’t seem true.  There are some pivotal scenes driven by characters that rashly pursue death and glory.  Aragorn is accused of it when he takes the Paths of the Dead, but that perspective is refuted.  Though the way had been shut for long ages, the time had come.  Such is the way of hope.  Things go on in a certain way until the due time, and then change springs upon the world.

Perhaps most potent is the image of grey-eyed Dernhelm.  The warrior’s silent, calm assurance going in search of death chilled Merry.  And it awakens our empathy.  Why shouldn’t it?  Who hasn’t felt that life is going from bad to worse, and decided to rush forward to the end instead of waiting to be burned with the house?  I think maybe Tolkien intended to carry us along with this character, so that we could reach the same end.  Dernhelm was proud, seeking glory before duty, though demonstrating loyal love to King Theoden by staying close to him.  And glory was achieved.  And darkness did descend on the desperate hero.  Even as Dernhelm revealed herself as Eowyn, golden hair glittering in the storm-piercing sunrise like a figment of hope; she was cast down, poisoned, and taken for dead.  [6]

But now we come to it:  Tolkien’s hope is the kind that stands further and deeper than all those things – than despair and darkness and loss.  He knew about a resurrection hope, about seeds bringing forth fruit after they have fallen into the ground and died.  Maybe he knew that fruit is more glorious than merely putting an end to your enemies.  His hope embraces grief.  It accepts hard things.  Good is not determined by the outcome, but by some transcendent standard.  And this hope joyfully trusts that there is someOne good who may intervene yet.

For Eowyn woke, and repented her destructive ideals.  Day came again.  Darkness was not unescapable.  Faramir described the moment, “I do not know what is happening.  The reason of my waking mind tells me that great evil has befallen and we stand at the end of days.  But my heart says nay; and all my limbs are light, and a hope and joy are come to me that no reason can deny.  … in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!” [7]  So Eowyn moved and married, healed and tended gardens. [8]  Her story is a fuller exposition of the transformation the Fellowship underwent in Moria.  They lost their way and lost their guide.  They had descended black depths and awakened demons so that they lost hope.  But on the field high on the mountain slopes, “they came beyond hope under the sky and felt the wind on their faces.” [9]

[1] Hopeless Courage by Loren Rosson, III (http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/lord_of_the_rings_guest_03.htm)
[2] The Return of the King: “The Siege of Gondor” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 797)
[3] See etymology of “fey” at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fey&allowed_in_frame=0
[4] The Two Towers: “The Riders of Rohan” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 430)
[5] The Fellowship of the Ring: “The Council of Elrond” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 262)
[6] The Return of the King: “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 823-824)
[7] The Return of the King: “The Steward and the King” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 941)
[8] The Return of the King: “The Steward and the King” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 943-944)
[9] The Fellowship of the Ring: “The Bridge of Khazad-Dum” by JRR Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin One-Volume Edition 2001; p. 323)

See also, The Silmarillion: “Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin” by JRR Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien

Chesterton

"But charity means pardoning what is unpardonable, 
or it is no virtue at all. 
Hope means hoping when things are hopeless, 
or it is no virtue at all. 
And faith means believing the incredible, 
or it is no virtue at all." 

~ G.K. Chesterton (in Heretics)

Captivated

I don't remember when it happened, that I became "captivated by hope", but I remember how.

It began with a simple call from God, to devote a year to hope.  I would pray hopefully for the desire of my heart.  I would enlist friends to pray for this hope. One year.

At first it was exhilarating - to dare to imagine that God might say yes.

Then it was hard - to realize that in asking, I was submitting my hopes to God, and submission allows for the Master to say no.

Afterwards it was this crazy tug-of-war between giving up on caring what happened (it's easier that way) and this too-confident expectation, demanding that God give me what I wanted.

And then, near the end of the year, it was a challenge.  Did God even want me to keep hoping when my request seemed impossible?  I dared it.  Fulfill the year.  Really hope.  God was God, and if He said yes, no matter whether it was at the last second, He would accomplish His yes.  And He deserved my waiting on Him, whatever His answer.

Turns out the answer was no, at least mostly no.  So then there was, "Well, the year is over and I didn't get my heart's desire.  What now?"  God's reply?  "You learned about hope.  Keep hoping."

Now.  Hope is a lot of things.  There are different kinds of hope, so I've discovered.  There is the wishful-hope, like wishing that it would rain or wishing for curly hair.  There is hope in God's character: that He is good, that He is mighty, that He is loving.  That hope coincides with the personal hope because of God's promises to me: that I am chosen to be joint-heir with Christ, that He will return, that He grants wisdom to those who ask without doubting.  Then there is the hope in His word: what He has said, that He will perform.  That last kind of hope takes discernment.  And discernment is often a process.

I learned that hope's definition is synonymous with the quip about insanity: doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.  Hope is patient, willing to wait until God acts or answers (even if His answer is to tell me to shift my hope).  Hope is humble.  Hope realizes that just as it was not my own strength that has done any good in me, so it is not my own strength that will get me any further.  And the same God who works in me is at work in people I love; I can't condemn them, because God changes hearts.  He grows things.  And what He does, does not fail; it prospers in all that He intends for it to do.

So it came that after months and months, I realized that it was impossible for me to stop hoping.  Not only for the original request.  Wherever I look now, I see hope.  In such dark and seemingly forsaken circumstances, I have gained confidence that we are not forsaken, that God is still there, and I will hope in Him.  I can't see the world any other way.

I've become burdened to be a voice for hope, to remind my friends that we have such a God, who is big enough, who looks on us and hears our cries.

Sometimes it is a burden, when I am weary and discouraged and would almost rather not be so emotionally invested.  Sometimes it is hard when I feel so alone in my hope, like everyone I know thinks I really am just crazy.  (I know how crazy it is.)  Sometimes it hurts, when I have hoped and my hope is disappointed, when people still suffer under sin and doubt and death.

But I cannot quit, and I do not really want to.  This hope casts me on God.  It makes me remember that He is.  He is why I live.  He is invested in this life.  He has called me to hope.  God has given me hope when I was empty.

Hope is beautiful.  Achingly yearning.  Climactic.  Epic.  Quiet and persistent.  As exciting as spring and babies and resurrection.

I am captivated by hope.

Has Been

What has been does not absolutely control what will be, 
except for this one has-been: 
God 
- He's real, mighty, has been doing things, 
and we may hope that He will 
work change 
in our world.

Sunday, August 17, 2014

"The LORD [is] my portion," says my soul,
"Therefore I hope in Him!" 
The LORD [is] good to those who wait for Him, 
To the soul [who] seeks Him. 
[It is] good that [one] should hope and wait quietly 
For the salvation of the LORD. 
~ Lamentations 3:24-26

But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for [it] with perseverance. 
~ Romans 8:25 


Remember the word to Your servant, 
Upon which You have caused me to hope

~ Psalms 119:49 

Return to the stronghold, 
You prisoners of hope
Even today I declare 
[That] I will restore double to you. 
~ Zechariah 9:12

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. 
~ Romans 15:13