Finding Hope Again

The trees in my neighborhood are telling me it is spring. The cherry blossoms are in bloom and other trees are doing their best to blossom and bloom.

      The word “Lent” means “spring”. Spring is a time of hope and change. So much is in bud, and our hope in God is not only an expectation for change to happen in the world, but for change to happen to us. The journey of Lent, with its steady march to Good Friday and Easter is an invitation to imagine that things can be different, better, more whole. Like Jesus, we must embrace the darkness and know that escape from bondage comes where we learn to trust in God’s grace and desire for our lives.

      Lent is a time for us to relearn or retrain ourselves to remember that when we trust and let go, our vision expands and we see things on a larger canvas. For some of us, this might be the first time in our lives that that has happened.

There is a story of loss and renewal that can tease us into looking at what needs to be changed or torn down in our lives in order to see.

A pilgrim was walking along a road when one day he passed what seemed to be a monk sitting in the field. Nearby, men were working on a stone building.

“You look like a monk,” the pilgrim said.

“I am that,” said the monk.

“Who is that working on the abbey?”

“My monks,” said the man. “I am the abbot.”

“Oh! That’s wonderful,” the pilgrim said. “It’s so good to see a monastery going up.”

“We’re tearing it down!” the abbot said.

“Tearing it down!” the pilgrim cried. “Whatever for?”

“So we can see the sun rise at dawn,” the abbot said.

This little story is a reminder that to lose something is often to renew it. If we look closely at our lives, as Lent invites us to do, we find that we have lost much in the course of our lives – a sense of wonder, a keen awareness of God’s love and mercy, our sense of direction and purpose in life. And yet, Lent teaches us that in losing there can be finding. As we spend time in silence and self-reflection, the growing sense of loss that we feel can actually help us to find those things that we have lost. This is especially true of hope.
       Today as I read the news, I was overcome with a sense of heaviness – mothers who murder their infants, brothers who kill their siblings, men and women and children massacred by a mad man, the growing pain of men and women looking unsuccessfully for work, again and again.
       It is easy to lose hope. But Lent and the paradoxical good news of Good Friday and the joy and victory of Easter tell me not to give up on hope. Not just because I need hope, which is true, but because God has not given up on this world, God has not given up on me. The good news is that in the midst of the pain and darkness of our world, God is present. And if we listen to the voices around us and those that echo down through history who walked the Lenten path to the cross and through to the Easter message, we see that what is true in their lives can also be true in ours. God is alive and God is active in our world and God wants us, through our loss and pain, to learn how to hope and live and help and serve and pray and be.
       And often for that to happen, we need to share our journey with those around us in the community of faith. I am reminded of something that the preacher and humorist Vance Havner once said: "Christians, like snowflakes, are frail, but when they stick together they can stop traffic.” The Lenten journey is a personal journey, but is not a solitary journey. As we walk together and share together, we find that what we have lost can be found. That what was old and dying, can be renewed and made to live again.
       May God renew you on this Lenten journey and especially give you his hope.