Reflecting on cultural and political revolution, theologian Rubem Alves offers these words on hope. I find his thoughts especially apt for the perennial revolution for which Advent is preparing us: the coming of Christ in our lives and again at the end of time. Today's Night Prayer and song follow after Alve's words...
What is hope?
It is the presentiment
that imagination is more real
and reality is less real
than it looks.
Hope is the hunch
that the overwhelming brutality of facts
that oppress and repress us
is not the last word.
It is the suspicion that reality is more complex
than the realists want us to believe -
that the frontiers of the possible
are not determined by the limits of the actual -
and in a miraculous and unexplained way,
life is opening up creative events
which will open the way
to freedom and resurrection.
But the two – suffering and hope –
must live from each other.
Suffering without hope
produces resentment and despair.
But, hope without suffering
creates illusions, naivete and drunkenness.
So let us plant dates -
even though we who plant them will never eat them.*
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
That is the secret discipline.
It is the refusal to let our creative act
be dissolved by our need for immediate sense experience
and it is a struggled commitment
to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined hope
is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints,
the courage to die for the future they envisage.
They make their own bodies
the seed of their highest hopes.
*Date palms don't bear fruit for 7-10 years after planting!
Sometimes, I think I'll lose hope in you
Amen.
There Is A Hope by Stuart Townend
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