What a time of darkness in the world! Whether I am tracking politics, worlds conflicts, religious strife or life journeys with those l love, it is bleak and fraught and painful. “Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone,” say Christina Rossetti.
In this Advent bleakness I have tried to attend carefully to the dark, but equally to the waiting; after all, isn’t much more of my life about waiting? I am waiting for Congress to act on the side of justice and mercy. I am waiting for the Church to find a way to be one body. And I am waiting with those who are ill, those who are captured by fear and loathing , those for who, resources seem to have run out. And I long for the Light to shine, once and for all. And so I Hope.
Often my muscles of Hope are so frail. Yet the four candles keep calling me to Hope in the Holy One, whose love lasts for a life time, whose mercy never fails, whose promise is trustworthy. Hope has to be the style in which I live, not necessarily the analyses that ping around in my brain. It is Hope that takes me out in the rain to sit with one who is suffering. It is Hope that stretches on the phone line over miles to listen and encourage. It is Hope that wrangles my little ones to church on Christmas Eve to see lambs, sheep and turkeys accompany the Holy Family to the manger. It is Hope that gentles me along the days and night of a decades old marriage with love and forgiveness. It is Hope that prods my letters and donations to the agents of action for mercy and justice. It is Hope that swells in this season as we sing not only of the events of Advent and Christmas, but of the vision laid out for us by Jesus and by the prophets of the time when war and suffering will be not more, and God will wash away the tears from all eyes.
Read the rest of this post at Elizabeth’s blog, A Musing Amma.
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