What does hope look like? – Parishioner Di Reilly
I enjoy it when our Reverends sit down to chat to the congregation. Except for the chat about grief. I didn’t “enjoy” that one as much as endure it until I found it all too confronting. But the chat about HOPE changed something and I found myself wondering what hope looks like.
If grief is the girl inside, locked in a dark room, curled on her side, clutching her knees to her chest in agony then “substantive hope” also creates a picture in my mind.
The girl only climbs to her knees to rock back and forth and howl and wail in protest at injustice, loss, the death of loved ones, hurt, betrayal, and disappointment. Her sadness as deep as a bottomless well.
On the outside, no-one would know… she functions as best she can, she cooks, she cleans, she shops for food, she takes care of her kids and goes where she must and is there for her friends. When tears threaten to appear, she blinks them back and swallows them and they taste like acid and hurt all the way down, like a too-large bitter pill taken without water. In the outside world, she refuses to cry anymore.
So, what does hope look like for her?
It is a beam of light that settles next to her, inviting her to look at the dust particles floating around within it like sparkles, coming from a window she never knew existed. It is strong, warm, safe hands reaching down and gently lifting her to her feet. It is an embrace.
Hope is the support and hugs from friends. It is the voices and faces of her children. So she moves gingerly to the window and sees all the light, the love, the joy, the promise of a future in which the sadness dims, replaced by that substantive hope.
We’ve all been in this dark place at some point in our lives, because no-one escapes life unscathed, although grief may not look to you as it does to me, or as I described…
But I think the hope that Stewart and Mary-Anne spoke of might just look a little like this. It just might be God’s love shining that beacon of light, creating a path out of the darkness.
It just might be strong hands lifting us up, (I imagine Jesus had very strong hands). Now, when that little girl cries and is comforted, that warm embrace is the substantive hope promised by the miracle of his birth, his life among us, his death and his resurrection.