“Stewarding the Night.” Advent Week #3: Hope
Hope is stirred by the attention.
"Nevertheless, that time of darkness and despair will not go on forever."
-Isaiah 9:1
It's 24 degrees as I write this reflection. My feeders are stocked, warm water is out, and the birds hang around all day long. I clip my dog’s hair (she's a Goldendoodle) and pack it into a little hanging cylinder for these birds to stuff the houses they rent on our porch. There is something about the birds, something about their regular presence and their predictable manner. They are messengers of hope.
“Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -”
My mom is a survivor. Like a cat, she seems to have nine lives. Last year, we kicked off the Christmas season with a 911 call. It was a traumatic many months; my mom lived on the edge of death, and we sat with her in the intensity of fear and exhaustion. Somehow, she survived. Somehow, we all did.
It began a few months prior, after years of suffering with wrenching back pain, she finally had surgery. It was truly the last option after many attempts to bring relief. Only a few weeks after that surgery it became clear her body developed a cyst on the spot they had corrected. There was no choice; she would require a second surgery. Very long story made short, she had an infection form in her blood that went into her bone which almost took her life.
My brother Mark came from West Chicago for several weeks in January. My brother Tim came for several weeks after Mark. My sister and I were on repeat between hospital, rehab, and back home on our couches with tissues and tears. Faithful friends carried us. Our spouses, a bulwark.
God felt both far off as if floating, inaccessible in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, and then so near I could feel him brush my arm. We felt stuck in a never-ending nightmare as she bounced between hospital, rehab, and ER, enduring excruciating pain and disturbing hallucinations from the strong antibiotic she got daily via PICC line.
One cold night, after my mom’s confusion was growing worse, I packed my backpack and drove that hour long stretch to Lancaster County General to spend the night.
“I don’t know where I am in the middle of the night,” she would say again and again with fear in her voice.
I wanted to be there when she woke up.
Between Shark Tank and The Game Show Channel, we chatted and dozed. Throughout the night, in moments of panic, she would wake up disturbed and confused until she lifted her head slightly above the bedrail to make eye contact with me; oriented, her head would slowly sink back into her pillow. Hallucinations, agitation, and confusion went on all night long—it was clear, my mom was getting no restorative rest.
The layers of complications, the complexity of her issues, the lack of sleep, the cycle of progress and regression, it was too much…
Thank God for the many doctors and nurses who not only strategized to understand her multifaceted situation, but also looked her in the eye and made her smile when there was no reason to smile, and gave us hope when there was no reason to hope. This staff loved my mom; when they got glimpses of her spirit, they made it their mission to get her through this.
“Even when there was no reason for hope, Abraham kept hoping—And Abraham’s faith did not weaken, even though, at about 100 years of age, he figured his body was as good as dead—and so was Sarah’s womb…Abraham never wavered in believing God’s promise. In fact, his faith grew stronger, and in this he brought glory to God. He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises…”
Dark, dark days. Sad and exhausting nights. From December 21st until the end of March, my mom was away from her warm home. My father was spent and overwhelmed, all of us were running on fumes. I have many takeaways from this experience, one is that I can sincerely hate the situation and yet believe it has the potential to elicit transformation. Not because of what we do, but because of what God does to us. It is challenging to share the breadth and depth of this crisis, and yet, these months were a seedbed for connection with God, raw and honest.
I guess in many ways, we are all living in the midst of miraculous circumstances. Not because all things are wrapping up so well, but because we wake up, have our coffee, and walk out the door in the reality that God is making all things new, whether we see it or not. We make our plans, run our errands, carpool our kids around—every part of our lives is infused with this promise. And when life seems to be off the rails, his promises are not weak or compromised; they are firm and fixed. Paul's words say it well,
But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us—by me and Silas and Timothy—was not “Yes” and “No,” but in him it has always been “Yes.” For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come (II Corinthians 1:18-22).
Gray our therapy dog!
And here is the other truth, that though the promises are firm, the darkness is equally real. I know too many stories. Friends, even this very day, sitting in dust and ashes of gut-wrenching circumstances. These are not the times to pretend; this is not the time when we can see the light. These times are dark.
Our hope is in the long view that Advent provides: darkness will not have the final say.
The robust love of God is the beginning, middle, and end. It is the foundation and the scaffolding. It is the underneath. When all is dark, this is the hope that anchors, holding us steady in the flood. The light will dawn.
Darkness is temporary.
This is the story of Advent.
One afternoon, early on, my sister and I had been at the hospital for a few hours. It snowed that day, and the sky was slate-gray; it seemed like evening started settling in just after lunch. The temperatures were dropping, and we knew we needed to drive home before it got dark; we were heavyhearted as we made our way to the car.
Neither of us could speak. We drove through construction down Highway 23 lined with orange cones, cement walls narrowing us in. It was an ugly highway; it resembled my heart—chaotic and stress-filled. The sun was going down, mixing her lavender into that winter sky.
Just then, on the opposite side of the highway, going west, a flock of Canada geese flew low in formation. Their black bodies marked the now orange-yellow sky. Absolutely stunning.
“It’s not a very nice road to fly over…” I reflected to Kim.
“No.”
Silence.
My mind paused. I grew attentive to the quiet. And, as if Jesus were sitting in the back seat nudging me to share something, I heard…
“I will bring something beautiful into this ugly place.”
These geese were sent. I was sure.
“Hope is a thing with feathers…”
Those words were not a guarantee of any particular outcome, and I knew that. But they were a promise. Ugly won’t have the final say.
"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light..."
What makes the feeling of hope so elusive is that we live in the middle of the moments, we are stuck in a paragraph with no context to the larger chapter. Think of it like a zoom lens, it’s only the present circumstance, and it’s all the details magnified. We are spinning around in the opposite of hope. And rightly so; we’re not robots. Reality is Reality. There is no polish. We are meant to feel it all the way through, friends. Our emotion is what makes us human, and human is how God created us to be.
“Vulnerability leads to connection,” that’s what our counselor says.
So how do we access hope? When we are in the hardest parts, when we are overcome with sorrow, hope seems like insanity, wishful thinking, fake…even foolish. It becomes painfully clear--if hope is going to come, it must come from the outside. It must be given to us. You and I cannot call it into existence.
The Supernatural.
For believers in Jesus, the supernatural is a significant, and dare I say, imperative piece of our worldview.
We wait. We pray. We look and listen. This is the posture of people longing for hope.
Salvation, in every sense, requires the supernatural…
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left (Exodus 14:21-22).
At the first light of dawn, the king got up and hurried to the lions’ den. When he came near the den, he called to Daniel in an anguished voice, “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to rescue you from the lions?” Daniel answered, “May the king live forever! My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions (Daniel 6:19-22).
But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end! (Luke 1:30-33).And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger” (Luke 2:8-12).
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:1-2).
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him” (Matthew 28:5-7).
Immanuel. God with us. From the moment Adam and Eve choose their own way, God’s mission was to move toward us. To be present with us. How has he come to you? I have not had an angel, but I have had people deposited into my life at just the time I needed their company; I have had checks hand-delivered to me out of nowhere when I couldn’t pay a bill and days before I was yelling at God; I had cardinals show up on my feeder when I needed a reminder to trust Him; I have had coffee bought for me by strangers and friends; I have had that song play at that time; I have picked up the right book when I needed a particular support scripted on those pages…
Lord, give us eyes to see and ears to hear.
My friends, we need hope. May God resurrect it in your weary heart today.
We have a Winter Storm Warning in our area tonight. Knowing my birds will wake up to a snow-covered ground and their little bodies in need of heat replenishment after a long, cold night trying to stay warm…I scattered seeds under the dwarf Alberta spruce, tossed a few under our dwarf blue globe spruce, I sprinkled small piles under each Adirondack chair, filled up every feeder, and brought the water bowls in to keep warm tonight.
I know how it will go, they pop around the ground, scurry under bushes and chairs, ground feeders will be thrilled, and the finches and sparrows won’t have to worry about supply…their hunger will lead them to all the bits of protein I have hidden about.
Their hunger will set them on high alert.
“One night after dinner a group of us were talking about the supernatural, and one of our dinner guests said that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural. In the days before we could touch a switch and flood every section of the room with light, there were always shadows in the corner, shadows which moved with candle-light, with firelight; and these shadows were an outward and visible sign that things are not always what they seem; there are things which are not visible to the mortal human being; there are things beyond our ken.”
Psalm 121—The Keeper
I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth.3 He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
4 Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.5 The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade on your right hand.
6 The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.7 The Lord will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
8 The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.
I’ll leave you with Eugene’s words from The Wisdom of Each Other…
“So what I am thinking is that we (I'm doing it with you, remember) pay close attention to your environment, this wilderness, and notice the details. Name them. Catalogue them. Nothing, if looked at long enough and closely enough, is without use—not infrequently, beauty unobtrusively seeps into our awareness. And then in the midst of this, while paying attention to what is going on in and around you right now, prayerfully notice what it is showing you about yourself, what is being revealed that you had not noticed before.”
A Prayer if You have no Words:
“Lord, Jesus, I want eyes to see and ears to hear. Protect me from a hectic and busy Christmas where I miss you. As I sit in some unpredictability, some hardships at work, some loneliness that leaves me sad, some conflict that is unresolved, some bone-weary fatigue…please, come. I pine for so many things, may I rest in you.”