Hope

HOPE is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.

I ’ve heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.
(Emily Dickinson)

When I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God, whose word I praise,

In God I trust; I will not be afraid.

What can mortal man do to Me? (Ps. 56: 3-4)

One of my students once observed that the one thing man cannot live without is hope.  She knew people who had no faith, but she thought that without hope, we could not continue to live.  I think she is right.  Hope keeps us going in the direst circumstances.  Richard Rohr comments: The only real issue in life is the steadfast love of God.  And the only real difference in people is between those who can believe this and those who cannot [The Great Themes of Scripture, p.12]

God's faithfulness is the only thing that we can truly hope/trust in.  Without that, we are forced to rely on our own resources, our own strength; anyone who has lived beyond the age of 24 probably has come to the realization of his/her own limited strength and resources.  In our emptiness, in our helplessness, we turn to God, whose love is both powerful and inexhaustible.  There is a wonderful phrase in Is. 29:14, whose meaning is hard to translate into English:

... very well, then, I shall have to go on being prodigal of prodigious prodigies with these people."

This phrase follows the Lord's lament through Isaiah:

This people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.  Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men. (Is. 29:13).

God's answer to man's lack of trust and hope in Him is to keep on doing wondrous things for them.  Some translations say that He wants to astound his people with wondrous deeds.  He wants us to have more hope, not less. 

Ancient Judaism was the only forward-looking religion, because God gave the people "a hope and a future" (Jer. 29:11).  Most of the Eastern philosophies and religions held that "there was nothing new under the sun," that history simply repeated itself in a circular pattern.  The famous Tale of Gengi, by a Japanese author from the 11th century, is a very long book in which nothing ever happens, except that the title character lives through a series of repetitive events, perhaps growing wiser with each repetition. 

In contrast to the ancient cultures around them, the Jews always believed that they were moving forward to a Promised Land.  In the desert, they learned to rely on God alone, whose providence proved true.  His love gave them the security to finally let go of their "slavery" mentality, the courage to be "insecure" and to head toward the future.  Judaism and Christianity began with the journey of Abraham, who because of his hope and trust in God, was able to leave behind everything that represented security and to go where he knew not, into a land of foreign men and foreign tongue.  There, he discovered the providence and care of a loving God. 

Many of us experinced the loving providence of God after Katrina, through the kindness and mercy of both friends and strangers.  After I was rescued from the shelter (where the providence of God had already met my needs), I wound up in Natchez, Mississippi.  There I wandered into a bookstore and picked up the book Abraham by Bruce Feiler.  In those first, "wandering around days" after Katrina, I read the following words:

The bottom line is is you're too comfortable, or too secure, or too into having control, then you won't be willing to trust  God.

And the Bible says, "I want you to have total trust in me, Abraham. You're not going to know where your next meal is coming from.  You're not going to know where your next home is. If you're going to be in covenant with me, you have to trust me with every cell in your body.  And if you do that, I will bless you"  (p. 48-49).

Strange that I should find this book just after losing two homes and not knowing where my next meal (or home, or clothes) would come from.  But everything I needed for the next 18 months was provided just at the moment I needed it!  God kept doing "prodigious prodigies" at every turn---more than I could ever have asked or imagined!

Maybe one reason for the terrible times the U.S. seems to be going through at the moment is to help us recover and reclaim a sense of God's providence when we have lost all of our own resources.  We have little else in which to hope right now--but God will not fail those who look to Him.