In the early 90’s I accepted an offer from Mennonite Central
Committee to serve as a teacher in Egypt, and was very excited as I put things
in storage, sold my car, and packed my bags. When I stepped off the plane in Cairo I was fascinated by the noise and chaos around me of modern life, and yet was
frequently reminded that I was living in the land of the Pharaohs. Here were
the pyramids made by Hebrew slaves, here were ancient hieroglyphics carved into
stone, here was a city where buses and taxis occasionally had to slow down to
avoid hitting a donkey hauling a cart full of carrots.
I was enchanted and captivated. I feasted on fresh mangoes
and pita bread hot from the oven just down the street from my apartment. I
sailed in a boat across the Nile and learned the rhythms of living in a country
where nearly everyone celebrates Ramadan. I was living a grand adventure.
But eventually grand adventures begin to feel less grand,
and the cultural differences begin to grate rather than enchant. My work was
difficult. My Arabic was rudimentary despite my diligent studies, and the
constant noise of traffic and calls to prayer were wearing on my spirit.
Everything was so different from my life in North America.
Attending worship services had always been an important
factor in keeping my equilibrium, and I was grateful to find an English
speaking church that I could attend most weeks. But even there the hymns were
nearly all unfamiliar, and most were sung in unison rather than the four part
harmony Mennonites had taught me to love. And so while I was deeply grateful
for the opportunity to worship with people from Scotland and Sudan and many other parts of the world, I wondered how long it would be before this church
felt like my home.
And my soul thirsted for God, and yet somehow the water I
drank still left me still thirsty. My soul was becoming as parched as the
desert I was living in.
I began to feel the kind of despair that can come when one’s
natural optimism slowly erodes from events that are out of our control. Have
you experienced this? Marva Dawn writes about this as a hidden kind of despair,
a feeling that we often suppress. This kind of despair is not new … listen to
these verses from Ecclesiastes 1, “All things are wearisome; more than one can
express; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, or the ear with hearing. What
has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is
nothing new under the sun.” Sounds like sentiment that Eyore would express.
Despair is not a new emotion, but it is perhaps even more
pronounced in our current technological age than it was in the time of
Ecclesiastes. You and I can control much of what happens in our lives, given
our abilities and our wealth … where we live, where we work, what we eat, how
we spend our time – it’s our choice – and so when it feels that our life is out
of our control we feel despair even more sharply.
The writer of Psalm 42 also felt despair:
Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
The truth is, there’s a fair amount of complaining in this
psalm – perhaps that’s why it was a psalm I could relate to it those days I
lived in Egypt. The psalmist remembers how life had been in the past – back in
the good old days – and she misses the joy and celebration of those times. And
now it feels as though she’s been forgotten by God, and the voices who say,
“Where is your God?” have good reason to be asking that question.
Where is God? Perhaps it’s a question you’ve asked, too. St. John of the Cross, a 16th century Catholic priest, named these feelings as
a “dark night of the soul.” We’d like to think that to grow deeper in faith
could happen relatively painlessly…. while we recognize that life won’t always
be easy, we’d like to think that in the difficult times we will, at least, be
able to feel or sense God’s presence with us. But the truth is that sometimes
it seems as though God is off in another universe, tending to the stars.
In a dark night of the soul, prayer becomes difficult, music
seems like noise, our eyes are dulled to beauty. It seems that the God who was
once close has now abandoned us. Any one of us may find ourselves facing these
shadows; even Mother Theresa experienced this sense of abandonment from God
throughout much of her adult life.
A sense that God is absent can make us feel hopeless, but
sometimes hopelessness can come from mental illness, from our brains not
functioning as they should. Sometimes despair becomes so overwhelming that
people turn to crime or substance abuse or suicide in an attempt to stop the
pain, and in these times, in addition to turning to God, we need to turn to
doctors and counselors for help.
But despair is often not the result of mental illness. It
comes in the course of ordinary life, from dashed expectations, or chronic
pain, crises that arise, from problems that seem to have no solution.
Suffering produces endurance, so Paul said, and endurance
produces character, and character produces hope. But Paul’s words aren’t
especially helpful to hear when we’re in the midst of suffering – “Since when
do I need endurance or character?”
And this is where we may struggle with hope, because when
someone is in the middle of deep pain, hope may appear as the smallest of
lights in the midst of darkness.
When Barak Obama was running for president, he frequently
spoke of “the audacity of hope.” The United States was in the middle of a
massive financial crisis, people were weary from the prolonged wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, and the country was facing high unemployment. “Hope” was a word that connected
with the voters. Hope was seen as something better, something more, something
new.
But hope in a person, even a person as gifted as Obama, will
be difficult to maintain, just as my love of the adventure in Egypt wore off,
for despite his many skills, Obama will not be able to solve many of the
problems facing the county, and many people will not receive what they had
hoped for.
Hope in a particular outcome is an important kind of hope –
choosing hope over despair or anger. But listen again to chose to face despair:
“Put your hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my Savior and my God.”
Placing our hope in God means that we are not counting on
receiving a particular outcome. This hope is also not based on our feelings, it
is not a matter of logic. It is a choice.
We all will have days, weeks, even months when we are
tempted to despair, tempted to not care, and not even care that we’re not
caring. And so it is crucial that we develop a practice of hope.
It may sound a little strange at first, to think of
practicing hope, but rooting ourselves in hope is a habit that can be nurtured
and developed. It is more than sprinkling a bit of hope into lives our as we
might sprinkle salt and pepper on our food. Developing hope is rather like
eating the bread we pray for – “give us this day our daily bread.” It is the
bread of life, nourishing, sustaining, providing energy.
It is this choosing to hope that is found in Psalm 42 –
“Hope in God, for I shall again praise him.” Having hope in God is not hope
that God will give us good things or make our lives happier, it is stating that
God is, in fact, our hope.
Practicing this hope in God comes through prayer, through
serving others, through gratitude. I am always reminded of the fruit that comes
from practicing hope when I visit one of the women in our congregation who
suffers from many physical difficulties. While I would be tempted to complain
or even despair, were I in her shoes, she always says, ”I have so much to be
grateful for. God has been so good to me.” Choosing gratitude despite suffering
has led her to hope.
In the Warsaw ghetto, around 1942, a Jew wrote these words
on a wall: I believe in the sun, even if it does not shine. I believe in love,
even if I do not feel it. I believe in God, even if I do not see him.
Choosing hope allowed me to see the beauty in a huge pile of
orange carrots every time I saw them on those donkey’s carts, it allowed me to
rejoice in the moments of quiet just before the sun went down during Ramadan,
it gave me energy to sing Handel’s Messiah at a church in Cairo. Placing hope
in God didn’t remove the difficulties of living in Egypt for me, but it
reoriented me.
When life feels flat, when the light around us is dim, when
we are tempted to anxiety or despair, we can make the choice to remember that
Christ is our light, light that shines even when we do not see it.
Put your hope in God, for I shall again praise him, my
savior and my God.
