This week’s episode is called “Hope what is it good for? It is part 2 of my series on Faith, Hope, and Love as the foundations of the joyful life Jesus invites us into. If you like what you hear, subscribe, share this installment with a friend, or pledge to support Chasing After Wind with a monthly gift.
Anchor
Hope deferred makes the heart sick,
but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life. — Proverbs 13:12
Sea
How’s your hope doing today?
As children, most of us were full of hope—brimming with questions, new ideas, and excitement. Our imaginations were insatiable. There were unicorns to be hatched from mud eggs; there were tiny villages in the cupboard and alligators in the canals. We could barely tell the difference between the world as it was and the world as we desired it to be. Anything seemed possible.
Have you ever seen a child crushed by despair? Forlorn, withdrawn, told to quit questioning and be quiet so often that they became the quiet. Their questions go answered, their interests unattended. It is so disturbing to see a hopeless child because it is a sight against nature. Children are hope in human form, but as we age, we begin to repeat what we’ve inferred from adults: that hope is stupid and naive. Hope is for babies.
What is hope exactly?
Hope, to me, is our unrealized but good desires. It’s our innate intuition that we were destined for joy, and I think it’s something we’re all born with— a spiritual sixth sense, if you will. Hope is deeper than a craving, deeper than hunger. It is a subconscious urge akin to the impulse to breathe. Hope is the oxygen that feeds a fire. It is unseen, yet without it, nothing sparks. Nothing lives.
I think about hope and inspiration in the same breath. As we breathe in, our lungs expand, and that is kind of what hope does. As we take it in, our minds and perspectives expand. Space is created for fresh new ideas to enter into us.
But for one reason or another, we stop respirating. At some point, usually in our teenage years or early college, we begin to try on ennui, a kind of cool boredom, a kind of laissez-faire attitude that morphs into cynicism that, at some point, becomes full-blown despair. We don’t want to look stupid. Deep down, we believe our hope will embarrass us. It feels too vulnerable, too unsure, too impossible.
Gradually, we begin to hold our breath and starve our lives of that life-giving inflow. This ultimately happens when we’ve given up on the hope for something more. We say it’s impossible. We say it’s just not realistic. We say we could never accomplish that dream, experience that kind of intimacy, or enjoy that kind of life. So we breathe in deep one last time, hold our breath, and settle in for the low-level, antsy agitation building in our chest and legs.
A voice from within your body begins as a whisper, then builds into a shout, and then crescendos as an unignorable thunder: “Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!”
This biological command mirrors the voice of the Holy Spirit desiring to fill you with God’s breath—His hope. The image that comes to mind is a lifeguard kneeling over a person who recently drowned, their lungs stilled by water and mucus. The lifeguard pushes down on the person’s chest, covering the victim’s blue mouth with his own, pushing air back into their lungs: “Breathe! Come on, breathe!”
The Spirit is trying to save our lives. Without hope, we die.
Many of us think despair is an absence of hope. But what if despair is a presence? What if it's like water in our lungs, preventing them from being able to expand and take a breath? We are wondering why we can’t see a clear vision for our future, why every day feels monotonous, heavy, and lethargic. Instead of meditating on what’s missing, driving us deeper and further into frustration, boredom, and depression, what if we looked around to discover what is present that shouldn’t be? Is it defensiveness? Rage? Resentment? Anxiety? Fear? Pride? Old disappointments? Are there suffocating lies that you’ve spent the last 10 years backstroking in? Is the creative block of perfectionism a six-ton anvil sitting on your chest? Is the fear of failure higher than the horizon?
The lifeguard has to get rid of the misplaced water to make room for oxygen. He does this by doing the thing we cannot—breathing for us. When new hope is forced into our lives, it expells the lies of despair we’ve inhaled for years. This triggers our spiritual instinct to breathe. We cough and vomit up the remainder of the “water,” violently participating in our own revival.
What is the Spirit trying to get you to cough up, to violently expel, so that hope can return to your life?
For followers of Jesus, hope is not just a virtue; it is a person. Over and over, the New Testament refers to Christ as our hope of glory, the hope of nations, the hope of the Gentiles; he’s our Lifeguard in this story, and the Spirit is his breath inside our lungs, filling us with new life and new hope.
The adage from James, “You have not because you ask not,” is a powerful challenge to the bounds of our hope. Ask for it. Ask for hope against hope. Ask for hope when there is no logical way for this to work out well and yet you believe that somehow someway it can. Ask for the hope necessary to let go of the boundaries, restrictions, and expectations about how everything’s supposed to go. Ask for hope to try something different. The hope that there is something worth doing is a powerful antibiotic against bedrot. The hope that I will be understood by the people who love me is a powerful antidepressant against loneliness and isolation. Hope doesn’t say that bad things won’t happen. It says when bad things happen, it isn’t the end of the story.
In that way, Hope is a powerful antidote against drowning. We don’t hope in specific outcomes but rather in God, in goodness itself. That somehow Go(o)d is infinitely creative even in seemingly impossible situations, and therefore, our hope is always warranted. Like Him, it becomes eternal.
Sail
blessing the boats - Lucille Clifton may the tide that is entering even now the lip of our understanding carry you out beyond the face of fear may you kiss the wind then turn from it certain that it will love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that
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