More on Hope this morning.
St. Paul said, “Suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
What I take from this is that Hope is not simply optimism or a favorable forecast. It’s not that with which we begin. It’s what we end up with.
Hope is what’s left of us after a long, hard struggle.
That means, if there’s even a feint glimmer of Hope in you, you know you’ve survived something.
Yesterday we lit the candle of Hope, the first light of the Advent. Afterward, we shared in our Service of Comfort and Healing in the beautiful Fleming Chapel.
In the intimate gathering with fellow strugglers, I tried to express the important point that the light of hope does not drive out the darkness. It accompanies the darkness. It warms the darkness.
The darkness remains. The darkness belongs. The darkness is a companion with a spirit and a voice also.
Fellow strugglers, in these days of diminished light, may we let the darkness speak and also be loved.
In a powerful scene in one of the Gospels the disciples return jubilant from a tremendously successful campaign in which the demons surrendered and Jesus says he “saw Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lighting.” Yet, Jesus told the disciples they should rejoice not in the surrender of the demonic, but rather in the fact that their “names are written in heaven.”
Not all campaigns are successful. Victory is never guaranteed. And, in fact, victory is not why we fight. We fight the good fight because there are good things worth fighting for, regardless of whether we win or we lose.
Let’s hold onto ourselves today, beloved, and to the things that are both good and true on earth as they are in heaven.