HOPE [M, 10-26-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

HOPE  [M, 10-26-20]

One day—I think we were preparing for company—Helen said to me, “Thank you for all the stuff you have done today…and thank you for all the stuff you’re going to do that you don’t even know about yet.”

That’s hope. Not wishing. She knew I would do what needed to be done, if she directed me.

I would not do what needed to be done because I was aware it needed to be done. I am afflicted with the male disease of ED-Electile Dysfunction, electing not to see what needs to be done around the house. Even in the absence of my awareness, however, she knew that I would do what she asked. “Not my will but Helen’s be done.” She had that hope because she lived in a story where that was the reality. She knew the narrative, and she knew the characters. It wasn’t wishful thinking; it was hopeful thinking.

So, what’s the difference between faith and hope? They have a lot in common, and distinctions are mostly about definitions. I define faith as awareness or knowledge that God is with us. In the last words of John Wesley, “The best of all is, God is with us.”

Faith is about the present. Hope is about the future. It’s going to turn out okay, because we know the story and we know the characters. Hope doesn’t mean it will turn out the way we want, but that it will turn out okay.

By “future,” I don’t mean “life beyond life.” Even as I come very close to the end of this life, it never occurs to me to think about the next. It seems more reasonable to me that there will be something more after I have “shunted off this mortal coil,” [1] but it is irrelevant. If you live your life now in the hope that you will “go to heaven” when you die, you have no hope.

There is a difference between awareness and recognition. I don’t think I’ve ever been aware of the presence of God, a “heart strangely warmed” episode. But I have always recognized the presence of God, known that God was the teller of the story.

I have a bit of the “holy envy” that Krister Stendahl and Barbara Brown Taylor talk about when it comes to God-awareness experiences. I think that would be neat, to “feel” God. But I’m sure it is not necessary in order to have hope.

Well, I am ruminating on this matter of “hope” because it is the topic for the next Zoom meeting of The Royal & Philosophical Society of Guys In Exile,” and each of us is to bring some thought, by self or others, relating to hope.

John Robert McFarland

1] I am always bemused and distressed by the lack of provenance awareness in internet search engines. I looked up “mortal coil” to be sure it was from Hamlet, since I get Shakespeare plays confused with one another, and according to Google, “mortal coil” was either a British rock band or a 2017 novel by Emily Suvada.