Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Truthfully, these phrases landed flat for me this year. They just don’t match my interior mood as I turn the corner into a New Year. Yes, it has been a discouraging and disheartening few months. Even the bits of national and world news that I’ve taken in has only reinforced the dread that so many of us feel. What will these next four years be like?
Honestly, this feels uncomfortable to admit. After all, I’m a person of faith. I believe in Jesus. My hope is in God. Right?
Suffice it to say the word “hope” has come forward as the top candidate for my Word-of-the-Year 2025. I need hope. And I’m sorely aware that I can’t fabricate it on my own apart from a grace given to me by God. I can’t will hope. I can only receive it as a gift.
In my reading during Advent, I came across a paragraph that has continued to fuel my imagination for hope. Notice the perspective of hope coming toward us, rather than us chasing it down.
“The hope that we meet coming toward us in Advent, then, is the hope that lies beyond any possible good news that could arise out of the human situation. It must come to us out of the future of God or not at all. Such is the background of the Advent announcement that bursts upon a world in captivity.” Advent: The Once & Future Coming of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge
Here, the perspective of hope arises not out of the human situation (that’s a relief!) but from the future that God has promised us, a future when God will “make all things new,” right all wrongs, heal all hurts, restore all to health. (Revelation 21:1-5) This perspective and the reminder of Christ’s second Advent have warmed my heart to hope.
One of the things that makes it so difficult about feeling hopeless is my inexperience with it. I’m typically a very positive, hopeful person. (Admittedly, this is coming from someone who has enjoyed the advantages of being white, educated, and middle-class.) My hopelessness today stems from feeling helpless and powerless to affect the grave “human situation” in which we find ourselves. While this inability to have impact seems accurate on a global and national scale, it’s actually not accurate within my own location where I can make a difference.
In an E-newsletter from a non-profit called Waging Nonviolence, I recently read:
“There is no better antidote for hopelessness than action in community.”
This statement really caught my eye! It gave meaning to something I’ve been discovering as I engage with the relationships and tasks of my present, local life. I don’t feel powerless and helpless when I participate in the work we are called to do through Fall Creek Abbey—in our own geography, with our family, our people, and our church. I may be helpless to affect the spiritual, political, and moral chaos of our country or the world. However, I’m not helpless when I do the good work that is mine to do, right here and right now. And that feels hopeful.
It can be sobering to realize that as Christians, our hope may have drifted away from the One who is the Hope of the world and placed on a fallen world and its brokenness. May we repent and turn our lives back to Him and model the marks of a Christian life that promises blessing (Matt 5:3-12).
Thank you, Beth, for being brave, honest, and vulnerable. One never knows where it's safe to voice our hopelessness in the world around us. It is a heaviness that I carry and cannot talk about even in the typically safest circles. This issue not only divides our country--it divides families, friendships, neighbors, and churches.
When I sat with my sister (who has dealt with debilitating mental illness in the very recent past), on the "Wednesday after," she feared. As she watches the national news, she fears. She, too, has to be careful who she shares her heart with. But she knows she is safe with me, because we both see through the facade of the hyperbole and we wonder with…
Beth, like you, I feel powerless to "affect the spiritual, political, and moral chaos of our country." I wish I was less affected by my powerlessness. The suffering of those in my own sphere of influence, let alone the country/world, is profound, with life and death implications. I try to focus on what is mine to do, on the people within my sphere of influence, yet I find myself plagued by an emotional flatness that I'm guessing is rooted in a measure of hopelessness. I will chew on your words and see what my heart might do with your invitation to make room for real hope.
Thank you, Bonnie. I am grateful for your good work and the way you bring hope to those who live in fear.
This resonates with what I have been pondering…. How can I “be” hope…if I practice kindness, if I practice loving others, if I practice generosity, basically if I practice the way of Jesus, perhaps hope will become a resident in my heart🤔🤷🏼♀️