Hope can be filled with wishes. I wish that I could have a new car. I hope the car will be blue. That wishing hope is a fleeting hope. Sure, it would be nice, but it probably won’t happen anytime soon. Yet, the wishing hope may give us a dream of something that we yearn for.
There was even a song, back in the day – 1964 – by Dusty Springfield – Wishin’ And Hopin. In this song she sings of the fleeting hope of wishing for her dreams to come true. In fact, Ms. Springfield lumps wishin, hopin, thinkin, prayin, plannin, and dreamin – all together in an aspiration of getting her desires.
This kind of wishing hope that is wanting for something beyond our immediate experience often disappoints. We make birthday wishes, have wishing lanterns that float skyward on New Year’s Eve, and on occasion our prayers may even sound more like a wish, hoping that God would be benevolent and let life go our way. Wishing hope can be like a helium balloon that may float up and drift away without even a moment’s notice.
However, there is another kind of hope. A hope beyond all logic. A hope that trusts in something beyond what we ourselves can manifest. When we wait with this deep-seated hope of heart, trusting in the love, power, and presence of an active God in the midst of human strife, life, and desire the active powerful Word of God which breaths, and lives among us and within us creates new possibility.
The Scripture
It is this hope, one anchored in the heart and activity of God’s love and compassion for humanity that is the prophetic hope that the prophet Jeremiah spoke of.
Jeremiah was speaking about the shape that God’s action would take in the exiled Israelites lives and community. They had been living in exile for a generation of 70 years. Those believers had grown weary of waiting upon God’s Word to act in their lives. They were living through chaotic and disorienting times. The Israelites did what they could to find normalcy. They intermarried with Babylonians, tried to settle into new ways of living and they waned in their trust of God and belief that God would act on their behalf.
The prophet Jeremiah spoke with the depths of hope and trust in God’s Word. They would return from exile. Their current circumstance did not reflect their ultimate condition of life. Signs of God’s redemption pointed to by Jeremiah not only named what has already been accomplished in God’s love but also pointed to what still lies ahead.
God’s promises give shape and substance to individual and community life. Hope rooted in faith, trust of God, and turned into reality through the creative, forgiving, life sustaining power and presence of God always begins in the present moments of life (good or difficult) and leans into and leads us into the future.
We like the Israelites in exile, live in a waiting mode of “not yet” and in the reality of “already.” There are so many jumping into illustrative points of our world culture that are in chaos and disorientation.
- Ukrainians being taking into exile from Kevi to Russia.
- People living in darkness literally, either from the destruction of the infrastructure for gas and electricity from hurricanes, earthquakes, bombs in the night.
- Gun violence: killing parishioners, school children, shoppers, neighbors, friends, people randomly on the highway.
- The political divide of this nation.
- The opioid drug crisis running ramet now with rainbow sprinkled street drugs to make them look like candy to our children and grandchildren.
And yet, in this chaos and disorienting time in history God is acting. People are miraculously healed, protected, strengthened in body, mind, and spirit. As a spiritual director it is my deepest joy to share God’s presence with people across the nation and around the world. Together we hear how very present and powerful God is loving, forgiving, and redeeming our broken world.
Today’s Pray Practice
Today we pray as we wait with hope. Take a piece of paper and divide it into two halves. On one half make a list of things you have been or are waiting for. This is the “not yet” list. Some of these may have already come into reality and you don’t feel as if you are hoping for them any more. Please put some of these things down on your list to affirm how God is working and active in your life and within the world. If it is a hope that has already been fulfilled by God’s grace, then write the way that God caused your hope to become a reality in the second column labeled “already.”
For the hopes that are still waiting upon God’s activity, write a brief prayer sentence offering your hope to God for each item that you are entrusting God to love into new reality. When you are finished praying with your hopes celebrate God’s faithfulness.
Enjoy praying.
