In Romans,Paul says, “Who hopes for what they see?” Everyone has hopes. No one can see the road ahead, yet we hope for safe travels always. We hope our road trip will be scenic and without accidents or any trouble — no long detours or one lane constructions. Air flights without delays or turbulence. When it comes to health, we hope the tests turn out, positive or negative, which ever is the best outcome. If health takes a downturn, we hope the treatment works!
“Things have a way of working out.” “Try not to worry too much about it.” “Keep your mind on other things.” “Breathe deeply.” “Pray.” “Stay busy.” “There’s always hope, right?” These are things people say or we say to ourselves to keep us from from falling too deeply into the abyss of hopelessness that is just waiting to overtake us.
To me, hope isn’t something to search for. It’s not something I find, not something I even stumble upon. Hope is manifest in the act of putting one foot in front of the other. It’s the action of doing the next right thing. Father Tom, an old friend of mine, always says, “It might just be making my bed or doing the dishes.” Through right action, we lean into hope. Showing up for someone else can also help. As I bring hope to a friend or stranger, my own sense of hope grows. Hope is the determination fueling the search for joy, the dogged pursuit of something other than what I already know. It’s the belief in something that defies definition. I’m not sure it has handles, but I still hold on to it, even though it’s slippery and my grip can falter.
Annie Lamont says, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”
Hope is not necessarily the promise of a happy ending. It is the promise of a different result and quite possibly an outrageous result, beyond our wildest dreams. We hope not in our own strength and abilities but place our hope totally in God’s power and radical transformative love. Hope is not a promised happy ending, but a painful uncomfortable surrender to what ever may be. Hope comes from desperation. It’s a painful discomfort. It’s a surrender to the injustices we cannot control. For sure it means a surrender of our will and our power, yet it is the force within us that stays and keeps trying.
Paul is calling us to hope. “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:24-26).
Groanings. Hope can be described as a force that comes out of difficulties. Life is often too much for us. It’s also very messy. I don’t know how things will turn out. Neither does hope. Yet this force comes from within us, just when we need it most. We stay with life. We keep trying, not because we can win, but when we look at how Jesus lived his life, hope is the only way to faithfully follow him.
Rev. Patricia Stout is a retired Presbyterian minister and a substitute teacher in Delaware County.
