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

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…

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. 

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?

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.

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