Longing for Something Sure
My sister’s name was decided in a car family-meeting, after two hours and 40 minutes of debating boys’ names. Mum was convinced it was a boy and after boy-girl-girl, we figured the law of averages would agree.
At 14, 12 and 8 years old, we siblings had no idea that it was an honour to be consulted on this (or on the decision to try for a fourth child or on the option of being present for the birth!). But every name suggested was tossed out of the sunroof.
‘That was the boy who bullied me all through Year 7!’
‘He was my first crush!’
‘That name has a weird meaning…’
We were nearly at the end of the motorway. Just five minutes from home. We had got nowhere.
‘What if it’s a girl?’ Dad threw into the mix. [Pause.] ‘Herrrrrrrp!’ Mum’s hiccup erupted, as they often did during her pregnancies. ‘Yes, that’s it,’ Dad decided. ‘If it’s a girl, we’ll call her Hope.’ We laughed and agreed to Hope; after all, it was sure to be a boy!
Hope surprised us all, in lots of wonderful ways – though we probably should have expected the feminist leanings after such a naming ceremony!
Hope in times of loss
The idea of hope isn’t easy to grasp at the best of times. It has a tendency to slip through our fingers when held too tightly.
2020 brought many visuals of hope to our streets and screens when we felt we had lost so much …
• Rainbows in windows
• Hearts on brick walls
• Clapping together for the NHS
• Joe Wick’s workouts
• Captain Tom’s campaigns
• Shopping bags and takeaway boxes feeding the hungry
• Long-awaited TV series
• Fairy lights on dark evenings
I’m an optimist and I love looking forward to what’s coming up next. Since the pandemic, this has felt like second nature. Many of my youngest son’s sentences begin, ‘When coronavirus goes away…’ and I find myself clinging to the hope of the next medical advance, the next festive season, the next in-person catchup.
But just as we are hoping more than ever before, our expectations are also being shifted like never before. We know that our routines, our holidays and even our freedom to leave the house have become changeable. Worse still, it may be that the pillar of strength in your family is now listed as vulnerable – and you’re experiencing all the anxieties that come with that.
I don’t know many who like change, even less who cope well with the uncertainty of potential change. It leaves us with very little control…
Just got a message:
We have been informed today that we have a positive case of Covid in your child’s year group. We have been advised that all children and staff in the year group isolate for two weeks…
[Sigh.]
Living hope
Now that they’re home for the foreseeable future, I asked my kids for help. What does ‘hope’ mean? ‘Auntie Hope?’ No, no, just hope. ‘Wish’ said one. ‘What you really, really want’ said the other.
Surprisingly helpful answers. It’s just unfortunate that wishful thinking and desperately wanting some things to change and other things to stop changing, hasn’t got me very far recently. I’m still left longing.
Hope used to have another meaning. The dictionary classes ‘a feeling of trust’ as its archaic meaning, but we still sometimes use hope in this sense today. In His Dark Materials (BBC One, 2020), Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) says,
Right now I feel more alive than I have in years. Because of [Lyra]. She’s given me hope.
This hardened aeronaut is filled with life-giving hope not by wishful thinking, but because he trusts Lyra (Dafne Keen). The Bible also talks about a ‘living hope’ – a hope based on a person we can trust (1 Peter 1:3). One of the Bible’s visuals for hope resonates with our current need for stability:
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. (Hebrews 6:19 NIV)
Why can we be so sure of this hope? There is a clue in the sentence before: ‘It is impossible for God to lie’ (Hebrews 6:18). The Magisterium in Lyra’s world teach us to expect the worse of religious leaders and our own political leaders don’t always fill us with confidence either. Like Lyra’s friend Will Parry (Amir Wilson) we have been longing for someone who has ‘the answer to everything’ but the older we get the more we stop believing and stop trusting.
What if our hope wasn’t always shifting – too vague to grab hold of, too loose to hold us through the pain of loss? What if hope was a person? Jesus is familiar with the stormy waters of our souls. He has planted promises deep into the ground, beneath the ever-changing waves of our society. Jesus will never failure us or die on us, and he holds the answers we long for. Maybe ask a friend who has found their hope in Jesus, how he makes them feel more alive. Hope might surprise you in wonderful ways.