Hope As Real As the Hurt

It was, as the saying goes, “a dark and stormy night.”

We had just finished an event on a Native American reservation led by a team of inspiring Native young people. 

Once safely in the church basement where we were staying, a lightning strike sounded as though it was moving in, and suddenly we were plunged into pitch-black darkness.

We couldn’t see anybody or anything. It was creepy.  

After a few nervous minutes in the dark, someone found a candle. I cannot begin to tell you the change in that room when that little flame flickered to life.

It wasn’t much—just a little light—but it changed everything.

In our personal dark times—and we all have them—that little flame has a name. It’s called hope. And it changes everything.

But that flame can be fragile too. It can be extinguished all too easily and leave us alone and afraid in the dark again.

Again and again, we’re hit with how quickly the flame of hope can go out. A storm, a quake, a pandemic, an accident, a breakup, a job loss, a financial disaster, bad news from the doctor. Life’s unexpected losses keep reminding us how insecure our security is and how not in control we really are. How quickly our “go to” person or thing can be gone.

It turns out, hope is more fragile than we knew. People and anchors who secure our lives are more “losable” than we realized.

I know. One night the amazing woman I had loved since I was 19 was by my side at our grandson’s graduation. The next afternoon, she was gone.

The loss was incalculable. It touched every part of my life and my future. Suddenly my personal world was turned upside down. The light had gone out.

Oh, how I needed hope. And, oh, what I have learned about what hope is and what it isn’t. 

Wherever there’s loss, there’s grieving. And wherever there’s grieving, there are choices. Some lead to hope and healing. Some lead to more hurt and more grief.

For hope to overcome despair in life’s dark valleys, hope needs to be as real as the hurt, as strong as the grief, as compelling as the fear, and as powerful as the pull to give up.

This hope finds the healing presence of God Himself in the midst of the rubble and is a hope that shakes its fist at despair and fear and shouts, “No! You can’t have me!”