The spiritual discipline of hope
Have you ever felt so much despair or hopelessness that you truly don’t know where to go from there?
Recently, a friend of mine shared how overcome and overwhelmed she felt by the genocide happening in Gaza. She shared with me, “I am so sad. I cry everyday feeling so much helplessness with the genocide happening.” This conversation was so striking to me that I crafted a sermon around it (watch or listen here). The main question I wrestled with in the sermon was this: What do we do when the suffering of our world, our country, our neighborhood, and our own lives overcomes us? Where do we find hope when we feel hopeless? For the sermon, I weaved in Psalms and Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech “Our God is Marching On!” to grapple with the suffering and move toward hope.
And yet, while preparing for the sermon, I was going through my own personal struggles that had me feeling uncomfortably distant from hope. On the way to guest preach at the church, I called my dear friend to share how I felt foolish preaching about hope while battling with my own hopelessness. We chatted and reflected on different elements of King’s work, and we were reminded that hope is a spiritual discipline. Hope is something we need to practice.
When injustices and suffering leave us in despair, we have to cling to hope. When hope feels absent, we have to cultivate it, practice it, seek it. Hope is there—sometimes more visible than at other times.
I don’t have a formula for practicing hope, but I am seeing glimpses of hope as a spiritual practice and trying to move closer to it. This last week, I went on a walk with my husband Jesse. We bundled our new baby and walked the neighborhood and wandered down new streets and dreamed in creative conversation. I came back from that walk and told him, “That time connected me deeper to hope.” We smiled.
Hope is a spiritual practice to creatively engage. As I seek to discover meaningful ways to cultivate hope, here are some questions I am asking myself and invite you to explore with me:
How do we practice hope? Are there specific activities or people that connect us more deeply to hope?
Where do we see hope in our lives, our neighborhoods, our countries, and the world?
How can we move toward hope?
How can we cultivate hope in and for ourselves and others?
