“Living In Hope”

These are not easy days. Not that any days have been easy. We like to put a spin on the past and look back with nostalgia but truthfully, life has never been all rainbows and butterflies for most people. Remembering history helps but remembering not with rose-colored glasses but rather remembering what we have survived, how God brought us through. Recounting the days of unrest, discontent, war, tragedy, even a pandemic, reminds us of what we have endured, how we “got over.”

This week I read a story from Karl Menninger. He wrote about a group of doctors who survived the horrors in a concentration camp during World War II. This group of doctors would gather secretly every night and share what they knew from their work as doctors. They shared believing that what they learned and gave to each other would one day benefit the world, even though they were surrounded by death, even though nothing gave evidence that they would ever be released, ever practice medicine again. They met and they shared as if their practices, their lives depended upon it. And as the other prisoners died, almost every one of the doctors lived. As Menninger put it, “They were kept alive by hope,” and “by believing in the unbelievable, that they would one day be released and return to their life’s work as doctors.”

Hope is more than just a brief pause of optimism; hope saves lives. It can bring peace; it can get you through a bad spell; but hope is also a spiritual practice. It takes work. It requires commitment.

It has been written that Martin Luther, the great leader of the Protestant Reformation, suffered periods of depression in his later life.

One day when he seemed especially gloomy, his wife, Katie, dressed herself in black mourning clothes. When he asked why she was dressed that way and why she was mourning, she answered, “Because of how you are acting, I thought surely God must be dead.”

Luther, it is said, got the message loud and clear.

As you move through gray winter days, as you witness the unrest among us, the continued raging wars, as you try to find meaning and purpose in this season, remember that God is not dead, and for the sake of all our lives, do the work to keep hope alive.

You are the light of the world!

Warmly,

Lynne

First Congregational UCC will be hosting Dr. Yvonne Delk on Sunday, February 4th. She will preach at the 10:30 service and hold a book signing and conversation at 2 PM. Copies of her book, Afro-Christian Convention: The fifth stream of the United Church of Christ, will be available for purchase.