NIGHT PRAYER: Friday 12/5

For many years now, in Advent, I've posted Reubem Alves' reflection on hope.  Alves was a Presbyterian minister and one of the Protestant advocates of liberation theology.  These words on hope are strong and wise: they bear repeating.  (My prayer for this evening follows Reubem's text...

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.

- Ruben Alves 

*Date palms don't bear fruit

    until  7-10 years after planting!

Lord, I can be so easily weighed down

    by my struggles, my burdens, my pain,

    by the harsh realities of my daily life...

Sometimes, I fear I'll lose hope

    in you,

    in tomorrow, 

    in others,

    and in myself...

 

So I pray you'll help me trust,

help me hope

    that the peace I imagine,

    the peace I pray for,

    the peace I long for,

    the peace you promise

        is stronger and greater,

        deeper and wider,

        than any power or problem I face...

 

Let hope be my hunch, Lord:

    my hunch, my hope, that my future's not fixed

        by the scope of my present trials;

    my hunch, my hope,  that the troubles I face

        won't have the final word;

    my hunch, my hope that my sorrows and burdens 

        are truly a prelude to joy...

 

Give me hope 

    in the midst of my suffering, Lord:

        I know that's the path of your love,

        I know it's the way that leads me to you,

        I know it's the way that leads me to peace...

Help me see how my troubles prepare me today:

    for the peace your reign offers and brings,

    for the gift of your healing presence and mercy;

    and then, at last, for the harvest of hope

        my hunch proved right by your grace...

 

Protect me, Lord, while I'm awake

    and watch over me while I sleep

that awake, I might keep watch with you

    and asleep rest in your peace... 

 

Amen. 

There Is A Hope by Stuart Townend 

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