I listen to the news most mornings while I make my first cup of coffee. One day this week, the first three news headlines were about new attacks by the US military, new fighting in two world conflicts, and the US presidential race, plus on-going news from Gaza and Ukraine, extreme weather across the US and natural disasters worldwide. I wanted to go back to bed. It was depressing.
News media headlines stories that get our attention by triggering our fear, anxiety or anger. Those emotions leave us feeling on edge and empty, and we keep coming back for more news, more details. If news outlets only told us joyful and life-affirming stories, we would find ourselves satisfied, and they would have no market. Instead, they paint an ominous picture of our world, one that easily triggers despair.
As Christians, living lives rooted in God’s good news, we recognize and name the voices of despair that attempt to drain us of God’s vision for us and for the world. Which is why a quote from environmentalist and author Paul Hawken captured my attention this week: "Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful." [1]
This season of Epiphany relies on hope. In Epiphany we celebrate, remember, and continue creating the story of the Light of Christ that comes into the world, gradually spreading from a small town in Galilee, to the Judean countryside and Jerusalem, and eventually across the globe. That unlikely light spreads, by word of mouth, from person to person, igniting the hope of God’s unfailing love and forgiveness for all people. Naming and centering the marginalized and oppressed, and the promise of peace on earth for all people, in all times and places. Even in our world today.
Just as we cannot know the brightness of a star without darkness, we cannot know hope without seemingly-impossible situations.
Hope doesn’t make sense when things are going well. Hoping for things to continue to go well is status quo. Hope, by definition, is a feeling of desire or expectation, which implies something more than already exists. Hope gets excited about possibilities.
There will be times when things feel impossible. When we wonder if and how wars will ever end. When it feels like our small contributions cannot possibly make a difference in such monumental problems. When changes to the familiar ways things have always happened or been done mean we don’t know what to expect next. THIS is when hope makes sense.
Hope defies and draws strength from the seemingly impossible. Hope grasps a small beam of light on a cold night and coaxes it into a sunny summer afternoon smelling of fresh cut grass and buzzing with happy bees. Hope says, “I have a dream. Let’s join our wisdom and creativity together and dare to live into it.” Hope draws a deep breath and bravely declares, “I don’t know where we’re going either, but let’s hold hands and take the next step together…and the next… and the next… until we discover the place God is leading us.”
Samuel heard God calling his name in a time when the word of the Lord was rare. In Jesus’ time, the authoritarian Roman Empire occupied a land with a long history among the tribes of Israel. A thousand years separate these stories. The human experience of feeling spiritually alone and abandoned spans the millenia.
God’s voice breaks through the despair. A familiar voice calling our name in the night, waiting for us to say, “Here I am, use me.” A friend inviting us to leave our assumptions and well-reasoned objections under the fig tree and “Come and see.” In Jesus, God offers the promise, the hope, of peace - in the world in the form of full and just life for all people, and in our hearts manifest as grace and forgiveness, gratitude and joy.
We respond to God’s promise by encouraging one another in faith. En-couraging. “En-” means within. Within-ing courage. Sharing the courage we have. Drawing out or building up courage in one another.
Samuel’s friend and mentor Eli tells him to listen and respond when God calls. Nathanael’s friend Philip says, “Come and see” for yourself the wonders God is doing through an unlikely teacher from Nazareth.
From small and humble beginnings, God’s good news spread throughout the world. If those first disciples, including James and John, Peter, Philip, Nathanael had not summoned curiosity and courage to come together in community and journey with Jesus, we would not be sitting here today.
The antidote to our despair is hope. Hope invites us, en-courages us, to wonder and curiosity, to come and see. God invites us to be bright beacons of hope for our world, sharing God’s vision of peace for all people. Let your light shine!
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[1] https://www.servicespace.org/blog/view.php?id=2077
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