The great struggle facing you is not to leave the world, to reject your ambitions and aspirations, or to despise money, prestige, or success, but to claim your spiritual truth and to live in the world as someone who doesn’t belong to it.
-Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved
It’s been a rough year.
The infections and deaths continue to climb as the possibility of another lockdown looms on the horizon. We’ve faced bitter politics where the health and safety of millions of Americans has been “controversial.” 2020 has been bizarre and horrifying in so many ways, but there’s also been hope:
Advances in science.
Advances in justice.
Communities finding new ways to band together,
to protect one another,
even as we stay separate.
I don’t wish adversity on anyone —especially the kind of adversity which costs lives—, yet I’m always amazed at how adversity can bring out our best, even if our worst has also been on display this year.
On the one hand, every trip to the grocery store lately leaves me a little more disappointed in our selfishness as a species.
On the flip-side, every time I set foot in the hospital, I’m amazed by our collective love and charity toward each other.
So it goes.
Humans are complicated, all of us,
a writhing mess of good and evil,
compassion and complacency,
anxiety and anger and affection.
We’re a mixed bag.
Yet at this time of year, we remember a God who decided to come and dwell among us.
God didn’t demand we leave this world.
God didn’t demand we abandon one another.
God came to be with us in this place
and teach us new ways to live here together—
a broken people in a broken world experiencing a God of unity and wholeness.
This to me is the root of all hope: no matter how desperate the situation, we are still invited to live lives of love in this place, secure in the knowledge that we are not alone. No matter how strange the world gets, this place —at least for the time being— is our home, and God has not left us here by ourselves.
Our hope lies in One who looked at a chaotic world and thought:
Yes, this is the place where my love will bloom.