THE LAST RIVER MILE

For Jesus-followers, especially in the four Sunday run-up to Christmas Day (Advent), hope is a major theme. We like messages such as Hebrews 11:1 – “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” We tend to assume that hope is the thing we need when that which we expect or long for is delayed. I have a clear, specific vision of what is coming, what is promised, or what I seek, but it’s not here yet. So I live in hope. There’s some truth to this.

But it may not be the full depth and breadth of hope in Jesus the Christ.

Hope isn’t limited to how I know or believe things will turn out. Hope isn’t confined by a script I have developed or received. I believe when we say, “things unseen” or “what we do not see” it means that we do not have any imagined picture of what is coming. We have no way to think about or envision what is ahead. Descriptors may aim its direction, like signposts. But that which is unseen will shatter our rigid categories of what can and cannot take place.

Twenty-one centuries ago faithful Jewish people believed the Messiah (the chosen, anointed one of God) would of necessity arrive as royalty. They hoped in this. Their hope in fact was realized in a poor child born to an unwed couple. No one saw that coming. Faithful people assumed the arrival of Emmanuel (God with us) would be announced to high priests and rulers. Instead, the news first came to common shepherds; the lowest of the low. No one envisioned hope that way. Folks hoped the Messiah would vindicate the rightness and superiority of Hebrew faith. But ritually unclean pagans would be among the first to pay homage to Mary’s child. That wasn’t a hope on anyone’s radar.

I admit that I struggle to have hope in these days. Politically, I have shaped a very specific hope for things like the preserving of the balances of power, the protection of due process, and the safety and well-being of powerless and marginalized. Others have shaped their political hopes much differently than mine. In practice of faith, I have hope that grace and radical welcoming will overtake judgmentalism and exclusion. Again, others have very different hopes in their practice of faith. There’s nothing wrong with human beings developing their own very specific hopes for the future.

However, all such hopes are seen on the screens of our thoughts. God is in no way limited by them, as evidenced by how God chose to enter the human stage. Hope in things unseen isn’t just a hope in desired outcomes. It is a radical hope in the One who is Lord of the outcomes, come what may.

I’ll see you around the next bend in the river.