WORDS ARE NOT ENOUGH in times ravaged in wait. We sink in the weeds, bury into the filth of soil and loose sight and hold of goodness, of promise, of ease. And woe when we even loose grasp of hope itself, for in the absence of hope life dwarfs to only the moment at hand and not a promised minute more. Taken by current moving steady away from the bank, we float wherever and however life moves us. When we loose sight of hope in waiting, we are as a compass needle spinning without point or as a swerving car in the dark of night without headlights to show the way right in front of us. This is the kind of waiting that finds us drifting in despair, when resolve will not hurry to come and no answer appears. Not as if you are waiting for something sure or simple, but wondering if what you need will even ever come at all. Our heart beats in rhythmic silence a wordless communication more ominous than any word formed could hold. If our words could carry accurate meaning, they would be of the foulest kind: inarticulate and bitterly raucous. No, even these attempts at capturing the emotion bottled within our heart only seem to bounce off the sky and return to our own ears empty without satisfaction or reply.
There are times in life we must wait, sure of things to come, and times we wait because truly, we are lost. Many good men, strong and assured, have faded from life in wait, dislodged from the security of life undisturbed and settled. What does this type of lost look like? Being lost can look like many things, but the worst kinds of lost are those times when your heart aches without answer – when what you thought you could count on falls through and what you hoped would happen never does ever truly happen. Life bitters and its current carries you wherever and however. This is the lost in which men lose their lives and yet continue to live on, quite a bit smaller and much quieter – a subdued, forfeited shadow of themselves once made braver because of hope present.
Just how does one find hope again once it falls lost amidst life’s arduous circumstance?
Hope doesn’t lay hidden from us, not is it elusive in the least bit. It is up to you to take hold of hope and allow your course to be steered aright by the surety that comes along with hope. Everyday thousands of reasons deliver hope right to us starting with crack of dawn’s warm light right down to the twinkle of each star precisely hung in expanse of the heavens. Thousands of years ago, a single star marked the arrival of the Hope of all hopes. Then too, there were lost sojourners sunk in wait, faded into shadows more bound to the shape of living than living as Hope had originally intended living to be: hope at the core, not a wind to be chased. And that Hope of all hopes forever poisoned the water sweet, so as to brighten the darkest of days with an unfailing flicker and forever welcomes all those lost in wait or anguish or death or disappointment and so on.
This is Christmas. May we come close and adore Him, the Hope of all hopes.
(image: "The Nativity in Lights")