Hope.
It’s a tricky word, especially for a grammarian like me… It’s a verb and a noun
and a feeling and you can’t see it or touch it or taste it, and it can mean a
million different things: wishful
thinking, intention, desire, longing, an expectation or a belief or knowledge
or trust. And as I meditated on this word this week, I couldn’t get this phrase
out of my head:
The thrill of hope, a weary world
rejoices, for yonder breaks, a new and glorious morn.
It’s
from the Christmas carol Oh Holy Night, and I found it an interesting word
pairing because I don’t generally associate hope with thrill. It seems to me that hope is something I’m
clinging to, almost as a last or only resort… when all else has failed me, hope
remains.
But
thrill, now that’s something I love and know well, as many of us do. It’s in the cresting
anticipation and excitement when the roller coaster goes over the top and you
feel like you’re flying. It’s in the watching
of the sun set over the open ocean. It’s
in the excitement of getting really wonderful news from a friend and it’s in
the relief when that biopsy comes back negative.
But
when I think back on those thrilling moments of my own small story, I can see
hope intermingled in all of them – Those moments are a reminder and an
acknowledgement that no matter what the situation, greater things are yet to
come – a new and glorious morn.
And
in the bigger story, the story of ages and centuries and of now, in this moment,
we desperately need that thrill - the world is weary,
I’m weary, with all that is happening around us, in foreign nations and in our
own backyards we find ourselves separated from our creator in a way that was
never meant to be and left us fractured and broken and desperate… for something greater than what we can see
or touch or taste. Jesus came that we
might have life and have it in abundance…
If we could really, truly grasp that, we might begin to
understand the magnitude of the beauty found in the manger, the promises he
brought on his sojourn here on earth… if we could really grasp that, I don’t
think we would be able to contain the thrill that is hope.
We
need this. We need a new and glorious
morn, and it’s ours to claim, a gift from the baby
born in a barn who came to heal the brokenhearted and set the captives free.
The hope that greater things are yet to come. Not just in heaven or someday but
here, on earth, now, in our stories and the larger story unfolding around us.
I
pray, in those of you that feel that thrill, however small, that this season
would fan it into a flame, that you could be a beacon of light and hope to
those around you. And for those of you
who are feeling rather hopeless right now, I pray right now as we light this
candle, from spark to flame, the Holy Spirit in ways mysterious and surpassing
all understanding, would light that spark inside of you, that you would feel
the thrill of hope. Amen.
