hope

Yesterday, I heard the news about Allison. She was 21 years old. I barely knew her. It has been almost a year since I last saw her -- gorgeous curly brown hair, big brown eyes, and a smile that covered half of her face.

When Katie told me yesterday, she said, "If only she could have just seen some little bit of hope..."

In The Secret Life of Bees, there is a woman named May who is a "little off," but is this way because she feels the burdens of the world so deeply. It is said many times that she carries the weight of the world. In her backyard, she and her sisters have constructed her very own "wailing wall" where she goes with those burdens, writes them on a piece of paper, and tucks it beneath the stones. In one scene, after she hears some particularly disturbing news about a boy dear to her, she goes to the wall, in shock. After some time had passed, her sisters began to wonder why she had been gone so long. Not finding her at the wall, they begin to search for her, eventually finding her in the creek behind their home, with a rock on her chest. Later, they find that she has left a note. In it, she tells them that the pain became to great to bear.

I was reading Lamentations 3 earlier. We like to pull verses 21-24 out a lot. And for good reason, they're incredible. But rarely do we consider the rest of the passage. Those verses are only really incredible because of the context they're in. I mean, Jeremiah was really "going through." "he has driven and brought me into darkness without any light," "though I call and cry for help, he shuts out my prayers," "he drove into my kidneys the arrows of his quiver," "I have become the laughingstock of all peoples." "He has made my teeth grind on gravel, and made me cower in ashes; my soul is bereft of peace; I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, 'My endurance has perished so has my hope from the Lord.'"

hopelessness.

But, he goes on to say,

"The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.
The Lord is my portion, says my soul,
therefore I will hope in him.
The Lord is good to those who wait for him
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good for one to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord."

The truth is, apart from the steadfast love of the Lord, there is no hope. But with him, every moment of our lives has the potential of being saturated with a hopeful expectation of a life free of the burdens of this world, one in which we are all liberated, one in which we are all at peace, one in which we are all ALIVE.

hold fast to that hope. it's all we've got.