"I like to close my eyes, so my heart can plainly see right through the way things are clear to the way they ought be." -Stanley, Troll in Central Park
"Angus, Superman isn't brave... You don't understand. He's smart and handsome, even decent. But he's not brave. Now, you listen to me. Superman is indestructible. And you can't be brave if you're indestructible. It's people like you and your mother, people who are different, who can be crushed and know it, but they keep going out there every time." -Angus
Close football games are so exciting. Watching a two-minute drill as a team is desperately trying to tie or take a lead. The suspense for a football fan is unbelievable. Will they score? Will we hold them? Every second counts.
Occasionally, these drives won't quite get close enough. The offense will sputter. The defense will hold. And the only hope the offense has left is a hail mary throw into the end zone. The quarterback lets the receivers get as far downfield as he can and then lets it rip.
When the ball finds its way into the hands of a receiver or hits the ground, all that suspense comes to an end. The outcome is decided. The winners celebrate and the losers head to the locker room.
But we don't live at the conclusion. We don't get to see the outcome. We live in the seconds between the ball leaving the quarterback's hand and finding its destination. We live in the uncertainty of flight, not knowing who will win or how it will all shake it out.
Our lives are an audacious act of faith. Every choice, every plan, every hope is a radical risk. We can't ever know how it will end up or if we'll end up on the right side of it all. We risk our hearts. We risk our bank accounts. We risk our futures.
In the world today it's easy to be cynical. It's easy to think there's no reason to try. Bills and bills pile up around us. Corporations feel like they're taking advantage of the little guy while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Every time we open our browsers or turn on our tv's there are new stories of violence and terror. Each debate brings new insults and protests and hatred. Politicians make and break promises and lie through both sides of their mouths. We see heartbreak and homelessness and divorce and it's tempting to think, how can there be any hope in this? Why even try?
To have hope is a fool's errand. Of that I'm quite sure. It's a reckless thing, hope is. The idea that tomorrow will be brighter than today. The idea that love can somehow win. The idea that good and truth and ideals will somehow come out ahead. It's a fool's folly. After all, failure and disappointment cast an awfully long shadow. (I should know, I'm a Vanderbilt football fan!)
And yet, count me among the fools. Count me among those who haven't given in to cynicism and nihilism just yet. Count me among the company of Jefferson Smith.
A couple of days ago I saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the first time. I've got to say, it's one of the finer movies I've seen in a long time. Jefferson Smith is a simple, honest young man who's called in to fill the seat of a recently deceased senator. He's picked because he's young and won't ask any questions or cause any trouble for the political boss from his state who is using senators for his own corrupt gain.
Well, of course Jeff discovers what's going on and attempts to put a stop to it. But in doing so the entire machinery of the corrupt political system begins to push against him. Sure, he loses his seat temporarily. But even more heartbreaking, he starts to lose hope. He sees people who he has believed in his whole life cheat and swindle and wonders if there's any good left at all.
At one point, utterly convinced that all hope is lost, his friend Saunders finds him leaving the Lincoln Memorial, the one last shining star of possibility he can hold onto in Washington. Begging him not to leave, she reminds him that nothing came easy to men like Lincoln either. "Odds against 'em didn't stop those men," Saunders reminds Jeff. "They were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that."
The world can be a hopeless place at times. We can have a great job, only to be the victim of downsizing. We can tell another how we feel, only to have that affection left unreturned and rejected. We can cling to loved ones, only to have sickness and age tear them from us. We don't get to know how our lives will play out. To love is a risk. To pray is a gamble. To hope is a wager. It is to risk disappointment and failure.
We live in uncertainty, laying our best plans and never knowing whether it'll be worth smiling about when the dust settles. And yet, there is hope. The Bible is full of people with hope. And sometimes it wasn't rewarded. Its pages are full of people who live with disappointment and failure. But they maintain hope. And they find it in a god who has never abandoned them.
Just think. Have you ever been to a funeral where they read Psalm 23? You know, the one about the valley of the shadow of death and fearing no evil. We read it for people who are transitioning from life to death, that as they pass through the valley of the shadow of death, God will be with them. And yet, those words seem even more infinitely comforting to those of us on this side of the curtain. I shall fear no evil for the Lord is with me? The Lord shall lead me to green pastures and allow me to dwell in God's house forever? There's hope in that message, even if we're not in those pastures today.
Better yet, think about the disciples. They cashed in all their chips on the Jesus train. They dropped their nets and left their families. They were all in. Based on what? A promise? A guarantee? Certainly not. They trusted in little more than a faint hope and unreasonable belief that Jesus was leading towards something big, a Kingdom they couldn't understand or describe. A Kingdom defined by love and peace where you and I were equals. And where did that hope and faith lead? To a crucifixion.
All that big talk and all those miracles had just been for show. All their efforts had been for nothing. Their hope had once again been shattered and misplaced. He was just another guy with some dopes who'd been duped.
Until he wasn't. Until Easter morning, when an empty tomb gave them a reason to believe that the hope of God isn't limited by death or failure or disappointment. The hope of God extends to the deepest despair and the loneliest island. It reaches to the tombs and the tears and the mistakes. It stretches to infinity, and beyond.
Hope is risky business. It won't always be rewarded. And sometimes it can seem miles away. But to live hopeless, to believe life cannot be any better than it is today, that is truly a tragedy.
For there is always a reason to hope, even if just the faintest scent of it. The cresting of the sun's rays over the eastern horizon, painting the sky in orange and pink and purple. The twinkle in the eye of a groom watching his bride walk down the aisle with a tear in his eye. A child who writes a Christmas card to her teacher just because he is a nice guy who taught her to spell her name. The smile of parents embracing their newborn child for the first time.
But hope isn't always so easy to see for all of us. Life's disappointments can strangle it and cast shadows around it. Our struggles can stamp it out. So perhaps today it's our turn to become the reason for someone's hope. Perhaps today is our turn to shine just a glimmer of God's light into the life of a neighbor who's been beat down one too many times. Perhaps today is our time to give someone a reason to smile for the first time in years. Perhaps today we will offer the first sign of hope a person has ever experienced. Perhaps today is the reason we are here at all.
We live in the in-between, never knowing what our choices will bring. We can plan and evaluate. We can schedule and analyze. But God is far too whimsical for our plans. And life is far too interconnected and diverse to be guaranteed. Every breath we take is a risk. To hope beyond hope is a gamble. And yet, without hope, life is not life. Life is meant to be lived one hail mary after another.
So may you find a glimmer of hope today. May you allow yourself to dream and chase after the whimsy and beauty that life has to offer. May you risk jumping headfirst into the plans God is inviting you into, not knowing where they will lead or if you'll succeed. And may you become the hope in somebody's life, the fingerprint of God's love on their heart.
forever unfinished...
