Daily Office readings: Amos 5:1-17, Jude 1:1-16, Matthew 22:1-14.
You will find the living God in the pages of the Bible. You will find him also just exactly where you are. When Jesus knew that he would not have much longer with his disciples he knew that they were sad at heart and he said to them: “It is for your own good that I am going because unless I go, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I do go, I will send him to you…I still have many things to say to you, but they would be too much for you now. But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth.” (John 16:7,12,13) Jesus does not break his promise. God has sent the Spirit of truth, he dwells in your heart. You have only to listen, to follow, and he will lead you to the complete truth. He leads through all the events, all the circumstances of your life. Nothing in your life is so insignificant, so small, that God cannot be found at its centre. We think of God in the dramatic things, the glorious sunsets, the majestic mountains, the tempestuous seas; but he is the little things too, in the smile of a passerby or the gnarled hands of an old man, in a daisy, a tiny insect, falling leaves. God is in the music, in laughter and in sorrow too. And the grey times, when monotony stretches out ahead, these can be the times of steady, solid growth into God.
God may make himself known to you through the life of someone who, for you, is an ambassador for God, in whom you can see the beauty and truth and the love of God; anyone from St. Paul and the apostles through all the centuries to the present day, the great assembly of the saints and lovers of God. It may be that there is someone who loves you so deeply that you dare to believe that you are worth loving and so you can believe that God’s love for you could be possible after all. Sometimes it is through tragedy or serious illness that God speaks to our hearts and we know him for the first time. There is no limit to the ways in which God may make himself known. At every turn in our lives there can be a meeting place with God. How our hearts should sing with joy and thanksgiving! We have only to want him now at this moment and at any moment in our lives and he is there, wanting us, longing to welcome us, to forgive us all that has gone before that has separated us from him. “If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.” (John 14:23) God makes his home in you. They are not empty words. It is true. “Make your home in me, as I make mine in you.” This is prayer. Isn’t this the answer to all our yearning, our searching, our anguish, to all the longing, the incompleteness of our lives and of our loving? Until we dwell in him and allow him to dwell in us we shall be strangers to peace.
—From Prayer by Mother Frances Dominica
This past week I have reflected on the nature of our Christian hope as it is related to the Incarnation and the promised Second Coming of Christ to finish the work he started with his First Coming. We have seen that the love and grace of God for us in Jesus Christ has taken the monkey off our backs and relieved us of trying to accomplish the impossible when it comes to being able to live directly in God’s eternal presence. We have also seen how the promise of the New Creation tells us to get busy here and now to help God in his redemptive work, even as we have a future-oriented hope. Today I want to finish this series of reflections on hope by talking about the promise of God’s Presence living in us right now.
As Mother Dominica states so beautifully in her reflection on prayer above, God has promised to give us his Holy Spirit to help us in our weakness, especially during those times when life smacks us right in the mouth. The Spirit is a gentle Person and does not violate our personalities. He works quietly within us, reminding us of our hope and promise, and pointing us to all that is good, and lovely, and beautiful, and true. As Dominica reminds us, we can see God all around us if we will just open our eyes of faith. The Holy Spirit helps us do just that. What this means is that we are never alone, we are not abandoned. We do not have to slug our way through life by ourselves. God is with us, but it requires the grace of faith to see him. This does not mean we are free of hurt or heartache or anything like that. Instead, it means we have power to overcome all that tries to destroy us (and there are plenty of things working very hard in and outside of us to do just that). We have God’s power living in us in the Presence of the Holy Spirit.
What does this look like in the lives of the ordinary Christian saints? When life is threatening to overwhelm us, God manifests himself by pointing us to the blessings we do have in this life. Or he gently but insistently nudges us to pick up his Word and read it. He speaks to us through the Bible and through the conversation of trusted Christian friends. For example, there are lots of lousy things going on in my life right now. My father-in-law is sick and infirm and the prognosis does not look good. I have a grieving wife and in-laws. Several people at St. Andrew’s are struggling with various issues and I am feeling the loss of my parents keenly again during this holiday season. But God does not let me stay there or dwell on the awful things in my life. He reminds me through Scripture and other sacred writings that despite all that can go wrong in his broken and fallen world, he is in the process of finishing his redemptive work. He blesses me with a wife whom I love and adore, and whose presence is balm for my soul. I have dear friends who are always there for me and I take joy in my work as a priest. I have a lovely home to live in and my health. There is much more but you get the idea. When life smacks me in the face, the Holy Spirit reminds me that I am not in it by myself. He reminds me of the hope that is mine as well as his many blessings in my life, and this helps me persevere and even to find joy.
I need to say one final thing about hope. When we use the word hope, we tend to mean wishful thinking, such as, “Gee, I hope I get an iPhone for Christmas” or “Gee, I hope the Cincinnati Reds won’t be such a lousy team next year.” That is not how hope is used in the Bible, especially in the New Testament. The Greek word for hope, elpis, found in the NT means to anticipate something, usually with pleasure, or to have a confident expectation that something is going to happen, like the Risen and Ascended Lord returning again in power to finish what his death and resurrection had started. It does not mean wishful thinking at all; rather, it connotes a confident expectation. So when we talk about Christian hope, we are not talking about whistling through the graveyard. We are staking our very lives on it. Of course, to have this kind of hope means that we also have to have faith that the biblical story of God’s salvation is true, that it is God’s very word to us. If it isn’t, we will all have a lot more to worry about than whistling through the graveyard.
What about you? How does the Holy Spirit manifest himself in your life? How is he helping you to live out your days in hope?
Today concludes this series of reflections on hope. On Sunday we will light the second candle on the Advent wreath. This candle signifies peace and next week we will begin a series of reflections on God’s peace.