The Birth of Hope
"No matter how much we recycle, believe in our Priuses, and abide by our local laws, we see that our beauty is being destroyed, crushed by greed and cruel stupidity. And we also see love and tender hearts carry the day. Fear, against all odds, leads to community, to bravery and right action, and these give us hope."
-Anne Lamott, Almost Everything
I'm currently reading Almost Everything, by Anne Lamott, which came out in 2018 but is soothing my 2020 soul with what I can only describe as prophetic accuracy. It's a book about hope.
For those of us brave enough to take off our rose-colored glasses, hope is complicated. Hope lies somewhere in between the current, ugly reality of the pain and decay that exists around us--or its looming proximity--and the knowledge that love has saved the day before and can do it again.
To put it simply: the intersection of Love and Fear is Hope.
Death tolls and diminishing bank accounts and approaching bills and deadlines and fragile family members and no-visitor policies have our collective anxiety levels ramped up to new heights like never before. I made a passing comment last week on social media about how I was having a sudden uptick in bad dreams. The overwhelming responses I got informed me that I was not the only one sleeping poorly and that my experience was, in fact, part of a very real trend. It would seem restless nights are all the rage right now.
Saint John tells us that "perfect love casts out fear" and I have been thinking deeply about what that "casts out" means.
I truly believe that feelings are not sinful. God gives us the spectrum of human emotion to be a powerful survival tool. Fear teaches us to prepare for trouble. It alerts us that something is wrong and turns on our alertness. Fear, along with sadness and anger, is not inherently wrong or bad or sinful. I think probably Jesus felt all of these in his earthly life, and right now, anybody with their eyes open to the current reality of the pandemic has got to be fearful on some level.
I have no interest in rose-colored-glasses faith that ignores fear, burying it under platitudes and empty cliches like "Everything will be okay" or "God doesn't give us more than we can handle." That only helps on a superficial, temporary basis. It is this kind of cheap optimism that leads to foolishness and harm.
But CASTING OUT fear is something else entirely. "Casting out" is what Jesus did to demons when they possessed and terrorized people. Casting out fear does not ignore or suppress it--quite the opposite. It looks it square in the face and says "You aren't the one in control here."
That is what love does when fear threatens to possess and terrorize us: love demands that fear make room for hope. Love does not numb us to feelings. Love does not shame our humanity. Love births hope.
Though community is a hard haven to find during social distancing, I pray that you may find strength in it during this fearful time. May you open your eyes to feel fear, may you allow it to inform you and allow yourself to truly feel it and express it. But may you also allow love to speak hope to your heart: a hand held through a bleak night, a gentle reminder that we will face it--whatever it is--together.
Kelsey Lewis Vincent, Pastor for Youth and Families, First Baptist Church Decatur