Graduate school was where I learned about and loved the writings of Victor Frankl, in particularly what he had to say about hope. Having spent time in Auschwitz, his words carried more weight than someone who just bought a lottery ticket. He made the case that those who survive desperate circumstances aren’t necessarily the physically strongest, but rather those who find some meaning in living despite trials. And meaning can be found through using creativity. It can be found in helping another person. It can be found in determining our own attitude about circumstances around us. People who survive are those who hold on to hope. You might say hope is the glitter on a dark painting. It is jewelry worn with work boots.
The times of this uncertain world of ours are not a first or second or tenth to face an unsettled present and future. We are so far from alone in our anxiousness and confusion, it would be comical if not for the plane crashes that have become weekly breaking news.
To wit: The newly freed Israelites began a long tutorial on courage when they crossed
through a sea which God’s invisible hand alone held back. I wonder who was more nervous – those in the front or those at the end of the line?
Christians from Peter and James to Polycarp and Tyndale faced persecution and death from emperors, kings, and bishops. I’ve always been touched by Polycarp’s response to the captors who came to get him. Would I have ordered a meal for them while I spent an hour in my room praying? I understand the prayer. The meal? I don’t know.
The pilgrims lived through a rough and uncertain voyage to a land they’d never seen.
Corrie Ten Boom and Anne Frank faced deprivations and uncertainty and horror.
Israeli citizens were kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed.
Lately, too, some folks closer to home have met with trials and deaths of loved ones in
East Palestine, Ohio; Lahaina and Maui; western North Carolina and the Appalachians; and the Pacific Palisades.
I’m leaving gaps, of course; gaps you can fill in yourself, remembering that not all uncertain times are on the news.
However, there is much good with the bad these days. We are watching an effort to restore (rather than reform) our government to its original state. It’s long, long overdue. We are watching more people turn to Christ. I anticipate changes in our nation’s food. We will see. We get to decide where we focus. We get to determine whether to weep or sing.
Romans 5 reminds us that we can experience peace despite tribulations, and those troubles provide a way for us to gain patience along with experience. And hope. Glorious, enduring hope.
Hope. It is the sparkling jewelry to our faith’s work boots. They, both of them, get us through the uncertainty of various threats, fires, floods, and more. I hope to see you, my friend, if not on the other side, next to me as we travel through.
Images: pexels-thatguycraig000-1467574.jpg; parting_red_sea-apha-141121.jpg; pexels-karolina-grabowska-4750319.jpg; pexels-pixabay-69934.jpg; pexels-pixabay-248077.jpg; Ephesians 6:10-17
We do know that trafficking of children, women, and drugs is at an all-time high. We know that at least 300,000 children have been “lost” in the last 4 years upon crossing
our border. That’s a lot of Amber Alerts. Drugs can be sold once. A child can be sold dozens of times a day.
understanding the enormity of this yet? Entities involved in trafficking as well as the by now cascading travesties compromising our very nation needed cover by people willing to be bribed or weak enough to be blackmailed. And the integrity of our elections figures into that. A woman named Tina stood her ground, told the truth, and sent that beast of a network into a frenzy.
The meal was some of the best Italian I’d tasted in – well – ever. By the time I’d enjoyed a second helping and gelato to top it off, Chloe had coaxed from me most of the important parts and some of the boring parts of my life story, including the suffering I endured from a theory book at every piano lesson until I was 16. When I told her I thought of G7 as having to do with more politics than music, we both laughed.
So the next time she walked out of the store, I clocked out (easy to do since I work plenty of overtime) and followed her again. And again she did not return home. She went to a small white church that had sat empty for as long as I could remember. Again she jiggled the door handle just so and let herself in. Again she turned on a light. And again I sat outside into the night, this time in between some bushes nearby.
of the door handle thing). I had never noticed its existence until that evening. Another week it was what I supposed to be a garden of sorts enclosed by a stone wall, and still another, the back door of a public library after it was closed for the day. A run-down playground. A boat house. My effort to discover the why of her grocery peculiarities gave no satisfaction at all, but rather led to more questions, and I began to lose sleep.
goods. Or rice. Not many shop for fish unless it’s in a little round can. For the most part, maybe without conscious intention, customers put the same things in their carts week after week, year after year.
What. She jiggled the doorknob just right, turned on a light, and let herself in. It began to mist, but curiosity kept me crouched behind an old oil drum for the rest of the evening. I must have dozed, because when I opened my eyes around midnight, the light was off, my clothes were soaked, and she was gone.
