Genuine Hope

Quote from the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of “Weavings”:
“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom.” (Mark 4:11) In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung comments that the world will ask you who you are, and if you do not have an answer the world will give you one. Jung understands that the world is impatient with mystery because mystery lies beyond the world’s control. Faced with true mystery, the world will impose answers or contrive confusion, neither of which can bear the weight of genuine hope. Children of God, on the other hand, are stewards of mystery. We dwell gently with it, not so much to search for answers as to be transformed by questions that open onto eternity. We embrace a lifelong movement from immersion in the opaque mystifications of the world to immersion in the luminous mystery of God’s reign. (Written by John S. Mogabgab, in “Editors Introduction.”)

Advent—that season of preparation for the arrival of God’s Christmas gift—is about remembering that our task is to “bear genuine hope.” We don’t have to figure out the mystery of Christmas in order to bear genuine hope. In fact, many would argue that insistence on solving the mystery is precisely what prevents many in the church from finding hope at all. We are better detectives than we are witnesses.

As witnesses, our egos and our intellects wish for us to have seen and understood more than we do. In the “court of faith” the divine defense attorney would certainly object to the conjecture and conclusions toward which we jump. It is very hard for us to say, “I can’t explain how it works, and I haven’t seen it all. All I know is that the promise has been made, the gift given, and nothing else will ever be the same.” Most of the time, we are more comfortable solving faith than we are living it.

“Genuine hope” is not built on understanding and reasonable conclusions. It comes from wide-eyed encounters with divine mystery, often-desperate confidence in future promises, and a willingness to take one step at a time into darkness, before light appears. It is neither for the faint-hearted nor the self-controlled. It lights in the palm of those whose hands dare to remain open.

P.S. The bluebird photo is from a friend, Carole Knight; a photo of "Little Missy" from last spring.

© 2010 Todd Jenkins