Hope Now

More and more, I am realizing that hope is not limited to the future. It is a grave insult, I believe, to call hope a "future happy fulfillment of half-believed wish." Hope lives in the present, not the future. If hope is a tree its roots lie in the here and now, while its branches stretch towards past and future. Hope has a hand in everything. To say, "we have pain now, but look ahead--it will get better in heaven!" may be true, but it is hardly helpful to the one who is in pain. Sure, it can provide a brief glimpse of happiness but it is almost harmful to point a suffering person to unimaginable events and experiences. Imagination can only go so far, and it is severely limited by a broken heart.

I think one of the most helpful things you can do for a person in pain after a time of deep sorrow is to gently illuminate present goodness. Don't overwhelm with false happiness. Acknowledge grief. Yet point out the laughing child dancing in the street, the multi-colored palette sunset, the patient father teaching his son how to catch a ball. Because here lies concrete reality, a present truth instead of a past or future one. 

Jesus said, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." Sometimes I get the verb tense mixed up in my head and think Jesus was saying I will overcome the world. After all, the evidence seems to suggest there ain't much victory going on in our war-torn world. But our God is a God of hope, and that means He is rooted in the present. He is the Light of the World and this light is our concrete, unshakeable, lovestruck hope. 

Currently I'm reading a book called Here and Now: Living in the Spirit In speaking of a particularly hopeful friend of his, Henri Nouwen says, 

There is nothing sentimental about him. He is a realist, but his deep faith allows him to know that hope is more real than despair, faith more real than distrust, and love more real than fear. It is this spiritual realism that makes him such a joyful man.  

Whenever I meet him, I am tempted to draw his attention to the wars between nations, the starvation among children, the corruption in politics, and the deceit among people, thus trying to impress him with the ultimate brokenness of the human race. But every time I try something like this, he looks at me with his gentle and compassionate eyes and says: 'I saw two children sharing their bread with one another, and I heard a woman say thank you and smile when someone covered her with a blanket. These simple poor people gave me new courage to live my life.'  

My friend's joy is contagious. The more I am with him, the more I catch glimpses of the sun shining through the clouds. Yes, I know there is a sun, even though the skies are covered with clouds. While my friend always spoke about the sun, I kept speaking about the clouds, until one day I realized that it was the sun that allowed me to see the clouds.  

Those who keep speaking about the sun while walking under a cloudy sky are messengers of hope, the true saints of our day.