In this time of COVID and beyond, where we are told not to touch our own body, not to visit our beloved ones even when they are in hospital, not to bury our beloved once even when we know deep in our hurt that we will never see them again, life is becoming a solid war zone. In such a brutal time, the only way to have a peaceful life is to posses hope deep inside our heart.
‘We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope’. Martin Luther King Jr.
Some years ago, I was talking with a young African woman in Zimbabwe, who was a victim of rape and the attributable burden of physical and mental health problems (including HIV acquisition) that she sustained as a consequence of the rape. Being vilified, marginalized, threatened denigrated and slut-shamed by the patriarchal society, in most of the conversation the victim kept silent. The only time she spoke to me she uttered one sentence that stroke me and stayed ever deep in my heart: ‘My silence is the expression of my anger, and my anger is an expression of my frustration’. The victim left me with one unanswered question – where do you find sanctuary when your world turns upside down?
Humanity has traveled full circle, going through the industrial revolution, enlightenment, two world wars, economic meltdowns, bipolar world politics, and many critical events in between. For many people, history or science doesn’t explain the centuries-old sufferings of humanity; neither does economics.
Environmental concerns such global warming and the unprecedented pollution has done worse damage than the never-ending carnage in many parts of the world. Is the supposedly civilized world walking backwards by ignoring the dangers the world faces?
As if the global tragedy were not enough, the Coronavirus stealthily arrived. The pandemic continues to take its toll on various fronts, from taking thousands of lives to devastating economies and the welfare of many people worldwide. The World Food Program warned that the pandemic could cause one of the worst food crises since the second world war. When humanity is eating each other, (Yemen, Libya, Burma) or waging semantic war on whether to call the pandemic China virus or COVID, the plague proved to humanity that all are living on the ONE planet — and must perish or prosper together.
Again all these events left me with one question – ‘What should the humanity do as individual and collectively, and upon what should they rely when their planet looks disastrous?’
The answer is in one word – Hope.
Hope is the spirit and soul of life. The great English poet and hymnologist, William Cowper, is a great lesson of the power of the lights of hope in the darkest time. Cowper experienced a period of depression and insanity and tried three times to commit suicide and was sent to Nathaniel Cotton’s asylum at St. Albans for recovery. In the middle of the depression and insanity he created cheerfulness and rationality to write a hymn called ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’.
God’s ways are mysterious. When Abraham and Sarah were way beyond the fertility age to bear children, God said “So shall your offspring be.” No one believed it would happen. Even both Abraham and Sara initially laughed before Abraham came to believe. Abraham lit the light of hope, and in hope he [Abraham] believed against hope and removed the path of hopelessness to conceive. He waited for the Lord’s answer. As promised he became the father of many nations.
As Scott Hubbard has eloquently outlined in his article, Cowper’s, ‘God Moves in a Mysterious Way’ was a statement of faith, not despair. ‘Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take.” Take courage. Take courage when the clouds come thundering toward you. Take courage when the coming days seem covered in shadow. Take courage when you cannot understand God’s ways. But why, we ask in the valley, should we take courage? Throughout the rest of the hymn, Cowper gives his reasons.
No weapon of man, no weapon of Satan, no danger in nature can keep God from keeping us. God’s people will never feel hopeless so long they show unshakable faith in God. That is what they did when they felt ‘their need for keeping along the road to Jerusalem. They did not cover their mouths in fear; they raised an anthem. They cried out with hope into the uncertainty, drowning their fears with verse and chorus. They sang against danger’. It worked!
We should frame our hope in our faith to God. ‘God delivers his people from one trouble only to usher them into another: he delivers us from Egypt, and then leads us to the shores of the Red Sea (Psalm 77:19). “He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm.”
Indeed, as outlined in the (Quran 65:7) “After a difficulty, Allah will soon grant relief.” And as outlined in Judaism ‘there is no ‘evil decree’ that cannot be averted.
In this time of COVID and beyond, where we are told not to touch our own body, not to visit our beloved ones even when they are in hospital, not to bury our beloved once even when we know deep in our hurt that we will never see them again, life is becoming a solid war zone. In such a brutal time, the only way to have a peaceful life is to posses hope deep inside our heart.
By hope I mean Hope and not optimism. We can think about this difference with the help of Romans 5:5, where the Apostle declares that “hope does not disappoint.” For Paul, hope doesn’t disappoint because “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit.”
To be a hopeful person is to be one who faces the future with the deeply personal knowledge of God’s love. With optimism one might not, because to paraphrase Roland De words optimism might give us self-assurance or affirmative anticipation that scientists will come up one day with vaccination or other forms of treatment. Hope, on the other hand, knows that ‘even if there is no vaccine or treatment, we belong to the God who is love. Although the future remains uncertain, God’s love for us abides. Always’.
