Hope in the Winter
Today, a daughter left home. Our college student who has boarded with us the last three and one-half years finally graduated. Stacey is the daughter of a good friend and moved into our house as a scared college sophomore, forced by circumstances to live with strangers. Today, she departed a confident women and a loved member of our family. With possessions crammed into a small car, she left Terry and I for her new job in St. Louis clutching the house key she had tried to return-all our children have a key to our home.
After Stacey left, I drew the short straw and had to walk the dog. The winter rain stung my face, the icy pellets were carried on a cold gust and bore little resemblance to the gentle rain of spring. If the temperature were to drop another degree, the rain coming from the steel-gray sky would become shear ice. As Mr. Jordan, my daughter’s little dog, took his sweet time finding precisely the right smell and spot to accomplish his tasks, I considered my current irrational mixture of sadness, gratitude, and joy with this latest child “leaving” and, the necessary hope for our comings and goings–our leavings and returns.
Hope as defined by contemporary usage is a, “feeling that what I want will happen.” The dictionary suggests hope differs from optimism because hope is an emotion while optimism is based upon facts. For those who follow Christ, hope is a verb with different connotations, a combination of a desire for something and the expectation of receiving-it is an act of the will mediated by God’s gift of grace. Our hope, when rightly configured, is in Christ. Proper hope is anchored in the reality of the Incarnation. Our “hopes” in a particular circumstance rise above self-gratification or optimism when the proper focal object or reason for our hope is in view-that is, Christ. But just now, thinking about Stacey leaving, I confess my hopes do not get past the subsidiaries of my feelings and desires.
I am excited for Stacey to move into the next phase of life, just as I am already missing the exhilarating chaos she brought to our home. I worry about her many untended “details of daily living” and the more significant challenges of long term relationships. Like every parent, I want her choices to be 100% correct, her work full of meaning and purpose, and her relationships made whole without pain. However, her last three years have been a fertile mixture of tears and joy and my experience, like hers, finds wisdom is gained, more or less, in difficult circumstances.
But to be honest, I don’t know what is best for Stacey. I’m a physician. Come to me with a skin cancer I can give an informed opinion. But, the question of the most faithful way to use Stacey’s many gifts, or how she should navigate her serpentine family relations, I confess ignorance. As a younger man I gave my opinions more freely than I do now. I sense the fragmentary nature of my understanding and I am forced to look away from myself for authentic hope and wisdom.
When I stand among the Colorado mountains I am filled with awe and wonder. The high mountain streams and wildflowers found in the midst of massive beauty brings me to the feet of our mighty Creator God. But walking in this cold rain, trying my best to not wallow in the sadness of leaving, I am driven to the God of Hope.
Those who waited for the first Christmas–for the coming of Christ–waited with a hope couched in the faithfulness of God. But, this was a costly hope. The miracles they knew were in the distant past and their dangers in the present. We modern followers of Christ can have hope couched in the faithfulness of an Incarnate God. As Stacey leaves us and comes into a new part of life she, and we, are forced to choose again between an irrational optimism in self and the true hope. To worship the Creator and not the creation is to hope in Christ. Our hope is in the same God who knows our comings and goings, even before this fantastic world was created and loved us so much that he become as we are in order to reclaim us. It is into His arms I commit my hope this cold winter’s night and with Mary, Joseph, and every believer since Adam, wait for Christ.
Riley
