Audacious Hope
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The scent of hope is in the air. We finally turned the calendar to March. More vaccines are coming. A few more kids are going back to school. A few more places are opening. And despite recent windchills here below zero, the weather forecasters keep talking of Spring.
And the season of Lent is upon us. A strange season, in some ways. Dark, but infused with glimmers of light. Painful, yet promising. Bleak, yet not without hints of joy.
Could it be that we are inching our way forward to a New Season? Could the pandemic be slowly abating, the icy grip of COVID lessening? Will our children one day be able to be fully and freely run and play and roughhouse again, in all the ways children need to do? Could it be that we will one day gather again freely—with friends, to worship, for Mom to Mom? Do we dare to hope?
I want to make an audacious promise. It actually has nothing to do with the weather. Or the pandemic. Or when (if ever) we might return to “normal,” whatever that used to be, will be. The promise? We have every reason to hope. We who follow Jesus through the dark labyrinthine paths of Lent have every reason to hope.
Why? Because it is out of the very darkness of Lent that real hope springs. Part of the purpose of Lent is to prepare us for joy, the Joy that transcends all earthly disappointment and sadness, the Joy that is not dependent on circumstances. Walter Wangerin puts it better than anyone I know:
“The difference between happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into . . . hope—and the hope that has become our joy does not . . . . disappoint us.””
Because of Jesus, because of the cross and the Resurrection, because of all that we commemorate at Lent, He—our God—is making all things new. Caroline Cobb sings through my mind almost continually these days: “Comfort, oh Comfort.” Cobb writes deeply Scripture-based music, and this song is drawn from moving passages from Isaiah. Please listen to the whole thing. But let me share one verse and the chorus:
“Comfort, oh comfort
There is a highway through this dry land.
They will call Him a Man of Sorrows
And like a seed, buried deep to rise again.
In the wilderness, the green of Eden
In the wasteland, the garden blooms
Up from the desert, springs a river
For He is making everything new.”
And so it is that this season, the season of Lent, is indeed the gateway to Joy. Through the sacrifice of Jesus He is making all things new. Not just a return to “normal.” For “normal” is still risky-- full of its share of disappointment and loss and sadness. No, not normal. NEW. One day He will make all things new. What better reason to hope?