The shaft of morning light invites, points the way, gives hope (detail), McKenzie River Trail, Mary Sharon Moore (2021)

Approx. read time: 1:45 min.

I encounter a lot of people trying to be hopeful. Mostly, I discover, they’re dealing with exhaustion.

And mostly, I think, they’re exhausted from trying to be hopeful.

“I hope for peace,” one says. “I hope that my job, my healthcare, my Social Security won’t go away,” says another. And one sums it up this way: “I hope for a world where we can all just get along.”

Hoping for what we need or desire but don’t have now can seem … elusive, exhausting, pointless, given the forces in play.

As a Christian, I’ve learned to not so much hope for things as to resolutely hope in the Resurrection, and in the One who says: “I am the Resurrection”—the living presence of fullness of life beyond death.

The power that flows from Jesus’ resurrection is at work in the world right now. It’s irrepressible. We perceive it when we dial down, shut off the talking boxes, and breathe into the subtle, resilient presence of  the Spirit of the risen Christ—in us, among us, beyond us.

Peace activist and writer John Dear notes in his book Gospel of Peace that after Jesus’ execution, Pilate gives orders to secure the tomb, since Jesus claimed that after three days he would rise from the dead.

So the imperial guard “places Roman soldiers next to the tomb to guard it, and put the imperial seal on the stone saying, ‘We killed you, you’re dead. … We order you, in the name of Caesar, to stay dead!’” (p. 144).

Hoping for this and hoping for that is exhausting, because our inner vision is myopic, our understanding limited, fractured, fraught with fear and self-interest.

Hoping in the One who is the Resurrection is the freeing hope, the beautiful prayer, the one expression of trust true enough to hold us as we walk across frightfully uncertain surfaces.

Watch my free 8-part YouTube series in my Peacemaking Playlist. And learn more about Jesus, that sly, subversive, revolutionary, prophetic Outlaw, in my book Gospel Vulnerability: The Key to Costly Love. It delivers insight and strength for our times.

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Be well. Live in peace. Love one another. And please, forward these thoughts to friends!