by Rosie Snow
Do you find yourself scrolling through twitter looking for cheerful hot takes and tidbits of encouraging news? Reading your fifth profile of Greta Thunberg this week, and still not feeling great about things? Asking experts on various topics if they feel “hopeful” in search of a tenuous assurance? Searching for patterns in world events that might indicate an improved future? If so, Hope™ may be for you! Hope™ is a new product that aggregates and distills all positive developments worldwide and delivers them straight into your brain via a handy chip that we will install for you. Never panic about our world trajectory again! Not covered by insurance!
If only, right? The thing is, hope is not a high demand, low supply commodity that we can acquire for a high price. It is not something that other people produce and we consume. It is something we do, and it is something we do together.
It is fine to look for inspiration from others. There are people and practices I look to that help light the way forward. But we don’t need to rely on world-famous heroes, prominent thinkers, and positive political outcomes for light when Christ has come to earth to share the most powerful light in the universe with us. Our faith should empower us to do hope, not just consume it. Ultimately, the hope that lives within us is the only hope we really need, if we are willing to let it shine forward. And if each of us shines with light individually, together that light grows into something far more powerful than any other force active in this world. Together it is love. Don’t search for hope in patterns of worldly power, find it in an emerging pattern of deep, loving connection that perhaps takes a bit more faith to perceive.
Christ, incarnate Love, has given us the ability to live hope, and told us that lived hope is more powerful that all the kings of all the ages. But do we really believe that? Or do we still hold tight to the very power structures we long to transcend? The choice is before us, and advent gives us the space to decide. So, decide. The challenges of the coming decade will require us to decide.