DAVID VAN KLEY

I will always recall the words a dear friend suffering from late-stage Alzheimer’s Disease, unable to speak for months or years, uttered out of the blue to his visiting daughters from his nursing home bed. “There’s always hope,” he said.

A new year is dawning. And while all of us certainly hope 2021 will not be like 2020, there are no guarantees. The future’s horizon is cloudy with concerns. Even as vaccines are rolled out, the pandemic rages. How will these next weeks and months play out? What about the personal issues — health, relationships, employment, faith, and more — that affect each of us in different ways? What about the big, societal challenges confronting all of us, in the United States and beyond? Racial injustice. International and domestic terrorism. Economic inequality. Climate change. Change, in general.

We may find ourselves anxious–even afraid–of what is to come. While some observers have called ours “an age of anxiety,” COVID-19 has pushed us many of us beyond anxiety into downright fear.

Not that fear is a bad thing. We were created with the capacity to fear. Fear is a necessary and useful emotion. It can protect us from danger. But it is not a good thing to live in fear.

The antidote for living in fear is hope. For Christians, hope crystalizes in the form of One born to Mary in Bethlehem. So the song goes: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices, when yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!” A thrill of hope! Isn’t that precisely what we long for as we turn the page to begin a new year?

Of course, the coming of the Christ Jesus did not immediately change the world. His coming created the possibility — the promise — of change. In him, the very love and grace of God takes on human form, our form. His coming gives us hope.

Like fear, hope is an emotion felt in the present, but projected into the future. We fear the worst, but hope for the best,” it is said. We hope for a better future.

Hope proclaims a future filled with the possibility of joy and beauty, laughter and meaning. Hope literally pulls us into this future, transforming possibility into a new reality. Hope for healing inspires us to embrace a healthier lifestyle. Hope for peace calls us to lay down our weapons. Hope for justice empowers us to notice and respect “the other.” Hope for reconciliation with God turns us toward God.

In the summer, you may see tiny maple trees growing in the cracks between the cement blocks of a sidewalk. Hope also grows in the cracks — the cracks between our fears. Light shines in darkness, the Bible says. Love overcomes hate. Death leads to resurrection.

Many years ago, the prophet Zechariah proclaimed to war-weary and beaten down Israel: “Return to your stronghold, you prisoners of hope.”

Or, as Emily Dickinson once put it:

Hope is the thing with feathers-

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words–

And never stops at all.

Editor’s note: The Rev. David Van Kley is a retired pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.