Unseen Things Below
I got one of the two phone calls I was expecting, this AM: My dtr, Rachel, called to say that her dtr, Elizabeth, had arrived at 5:40 this morning, after a night of labor made more difficult by the fact that Elizabeth's hand was over her head through the process! This might have mattered less had Elizabeth been smaller, but at 8 lbs, 1 oz, and 19 inches, coming through my tiny daughter--well, if I don't have a mother's empathy, I can at least have a father's! Ouch!
More, I know that the alterations in my dtr's life have only begun with this one of her body. For Elizabeth is to be a Leo, not unlike me; my dtr hoped for a Cancer, like herself. Oh, boy! I told Rachel that Elizabeth is bound to be a very inqusitive and likely talkative person: Entering life with her hand raised, her questions just waiting to be asked!
Rachel was a little too tired and sore for my philosophy...
But here Elizabeth is, starting life, as it were, without baggage, but having already made an impression and had an impact. And here I am, re-starting life-- ah, but with the baggage of my years, and having made an impression and had an impact that might lead me to be hopeful...
Of course, when a child is born, there is Hope all around. We proclaim this at Christmas, but we also often experience at any time of year, in the event of birth itself. It can be an easy thing to affirm the presence of Hope, in the abstract. It is more difficult to hope, to be hope-full, and to know what to do with one's hopefulness..
Most of the time, I think we tend to want to be active with our hope. For one thing, we tend to think concretely about it. I mean, we want to know what to hope for... In this way we direct our hoping at some thing: a goal, an outcome, even an object, as in, I hope I get a car like that! But something happens to our hoping the more specific we get with it. Hope easily changes into expectation the more we direct our hoping toward something specific.
That is not necessarily bad. Many of our hospice patients, for example, would find themselves hoping to do something "one more time," like go to Vegas or even outside, to the beach. As their hoping became an expectation of themselves, they found motivation, and often accomplished what they hoped to do.
But something happened to the nature of Hope in themselves. Once hoping became directed, and transformed to expectation, curiously, they lost a sense of how merely to be hope-full. Having accomplished their goal, they came to think they had to set more goals in order to be hopeful, when actually, they could have simply been hopeful, quite without any expectations or aims.
Being hopeful is hard, though. Among other things, as a state of being, like a state of grace, being hopeful involves trusting, in a deep way, and in a way, against a lot of evidence to the contrary. People who survive life-threatening situations do so because they are able to maintiain a sense of hopefulness in themselves which is beyond setting specific goals and which is based on a kind of inner confidence that, at one level, "everything will work our all right" or "as it should."
What makes Hope so important to our spiritual well-being is this willingness to have our lives shaped by what we do NOT see. Often there is no empirical basis of being hopeful. But when we are hopeful anyway... well, then something in our core remains unshaken and is confirmed, even in the face of trauma and adversity. We experience ourselves being carried through...
In one of my favorite books in the Bible, Romans, and one of my favorite chapters, 8, Paul speaks about hope in "birthing" terms (v22), so you might know that he speaks to me today! And he says: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (vv24,25)."
Ah, I think right away: the lesson of patience again! But more: the activity that comes with being hopeful is: waiting... Ummm, waiting sounds very passive to me! I mean, I tend to want to do something, to put my hope into gear, as it were! But I notice this about myself: The more I put my hope in my own activity, the more anxious I become. The more I put my hope it God's activity-- and wait for it!-- the more peaceful I can be.
Thus I endeavor to live in the Truth of this passage. I do not yet see where God is leading me-- I just trust that God is. If I based my hoping on the evidence around me, all I would see is devastation, what Paul might call "bondage and decay." But in truth, I am Hope-filled. I trust that God is already "at work" in ways not yet visibile to me. As it see it, my hopefulness is the upwelling in my personal life of God's Hope in creation.
On this day of the birth of my first grandchild, how can I not dwell in Hope?
And as a friend of mine wrote me this morning: "And where the God of our understanding is leading us is still to be seen." And so it is... Hopefully, "more will be revealed!"
Blessings, one and all.
More, I know that the alterations in my dtr's life have only begun with this one of her body. For Elizabeth is to be a Leo, not unlike me; my dtr hoped for a Cancer, like herself. Oh, boy! I told Rachel that Elizabeth is bound to be a very inqusitive and likely talkative person: Entering life with her hand raised, her questions just waiting to be asked!
Rachel was a little too tired and sore for my philosophy...
But here Elizabeth is, starting life, as it were, without baggage, but having already made an impression and had an impact. And here I am, re-starting life-- ah, but with the baggage of my years, and having made an impression and had an impact that might lead me to be hopeful...
Of course, when a child is born, there is Hope all around. We proclaim this at Christmas, but we also often experience at any time of year, in the event of birth itself. It can be an easy thing to affirm the presence of Hope, in the abstract. It is more difficult to hope, to be hope-full, and to know what to do with one's hopefulness..
Most of the time, I think we tend to want to be active with our hope. For one thing, we tend to think concretely about it. I mean, we want to know what to hope for... In this way we direct our hoping at some thing: a goal, an outcome, even an object, as in, I hope I get a car like that! But something happens to our hoping the more specific we get with it. Hope easily changes into expectation the more we direct our hoping toward something specific.
That is not necessarily bad. Many of our hospice patients, for example, would find themselves hoping to do something "one more time," like go to Vegas or even outside, to the beach. As their hoping became an expectation of themselves, they found motivation, and often accomplished what they hoped to do.
But something happened to the nature of Hope in themselves. Once hoping became directed, and transformed to expectation, curiously, they lost a sense of how merely to be hope-full. Having accomplished their goal, they came to think they had to set more goals in order to be hopeful, when actually, they could have simply been hopeful, quite without any expectations or aims.
Being hopeful is hard, though. Among other things, as a state of being, like a state of grace, being hopeful involves trusting, in a deep way, and in a way, against a lot of evidence to the contrary. People who survive life-threatening situations do so because they are able to maintiain a sense of hopefulness in themselves which is beyond setting specific goals and which is based on a kind of inner confidence that, at one level, "everything will work our all right" or "as it should."
What makes Hope so important to our spiritual well-being is this willingness to have our lives shaped by what we do NOT see. Often there is no empirical basis of being hopeful. But when we are hopeful anyway... well, then something in our core remains unshaken and is confirmed, even in the face of trauma and adversity. We experience ourselves being carried through...
In one of my favorite books in the Bible, Romans, and one of my favorite chapters, 8, Paul speaks about hope in "birthing" terms (v22), so you might know that he speaks to me today! And he says: "For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (vv24,25)."
Ah, I think right away: the lesson of patience again! But more: the activity that comes with being hopeful is: waiting... Ummm, waiting sounds very passive to me! I mean, I tend to want to do something, to put my hope into gear, as it were! But I notice this about myself: The more I put my hope in my own activity, the more anxious I become. The more I put my hope it God's activity-- and wait for it!-- the more peaceful I can be.
Thus I endeavor to live in the Truth of this passage. I do not yet see where God is leading me-- I just trust that God is. If I based my hoping on the evidence around me, all I would see is devastation, what Paul might call "bondage and decay." But in truth, I am Hope-filled. I trust that God is already "at work" in ways not yet visibile to me. As it see it, my hopefulness is the upwelling in my personal life of God's Hope in creation.
On this day of the birth of my first grandchild, how can I not dwell in Hope?
And as a friend of mine wrote me this morning: "And where the God of our understanding is leading us is still to be seen." And so it is... Hopefully, "more will be revealed!"
Blessings, one and all.
posted by TRXTR | 11:11 AM
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