“Hope is a good thing, and good thing never dies.”
-- Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption
Strangely enough, I embraced the Christmas spirit much
earlier this year. Usually I find myself in late-December, soaking up the
California sun, trying to magically conjure up some Christmas flair. But today
wraps up my third week in full holiday mode. The decorations were up before the
Heisman was announced and the gifts were wrapped before Miss Universe was
crowned. Oh and the carols have been a-playing for weeks.
Christmas carols are magical. I love all the songs from Bing
Crosby to Kelly Clarkson, from the exclamations (Angels We Have Heard on High! and Joy to the World!) to the questions (Mary Did You Know? and Do You
Hear What I Hear?). However, my all-time favorite is still O Holy Night.
O Holy Night
contains the one of the greatest lines this side of in a galaxy far, far away:
A Thrill of Hope … A Weary World Rejoices.
A thrill of hope
… it’s a line that brings me to my knees every December. Because I remember a
time not so long ago when I had lost my hope.
Interestingly enough, an atheist, Frenchman Placide Cappeau,
originally wrote O Holy Night in 1843
as a poem called Midnight, Christians
to celebrate the renovation of the town organ in Roquemaure, France. A few years later, composer Adolphe Adam put the
poem to music. Then in 1855, American minister John Sullivan Dwight created the
song we know based on Cappeau’s text.
Pastor Dwight
was thrilled by hope, but what thrills you? An amusement park thrill ride? A
promotion? A quiet night with your significant other? Zooming down a winding
mountain road? Short lines at Costco? Author W.P. Kinsella has a book of
baseball stories named, The Thrill of the
Grass. The title always comes to mind when I chase fly balls in leftfield.
I find watching talented performers extremely thrilling: a dancer, a singer, a
skater, an actor, an athlete, or a musician. I find the opening to U2’s Where the Streets Have no Name completely
thrilling. A sunset. Standing on the edge of a cliff in Zion National Park. Laughing
with a Mozambican child. All so thrilling.
Are you
thrilled by hope?
I am. Because hope
can be gone in a flash.
Can our world
be any wearier? There is the constant threat of terrorism. Natural disasters such
as fires, floods, earthquakes, droughts, and tornados pockmark the planet. Wars
and the rumors of wars highlight the news. Social injustice. Human trafficking.
Poverty. Homelessness. The refugee crisis, mass shootings, and Common Core math.
We live a world
that appears to be unfixable. I know the feeling.
And yet, 2,000
years ago, a young couple settled in for the night in remote corner of a tiny
town, in a little country surrounded by a sea of Roman oppression. As darkness
fell, the world paused and held its breath … like I do before Mike Trout goes
back to the wall, or before The Edge plucks that first note, or before an
Olympic gymnast takes flight …
everything appears to stop … and wait.
Like the
shepherds in the field waited …
Like the angels
waited to take center stage …
Like the young
couple waited in the stable …
And then the
crowd goes wild because the catch is made; the gymnast sticks the landing, the guitar
solo echoes through the arena, and the baby Jesus cries.
One day in 2008
I found myself without hope. It was a lonely bottom-of-a-pit kind of place. I adamantly
believed that the rivers of troubles in my life weren’t going to part and the
walls of my problems were not going to tumble.
The absence of
hope is doubt, and doubt isn’t very thrilling.
My heart breaks
for people who go through life without the hope that Jesus brings. I think it’s
why we Christians try to share our faith. Sure there’s the amazing realization
that through Jesus we gain forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and
eternal life. At times those truths can feel abstract. But as with love and
faith, hope is tangible. And that’s what Christians want to see their friends
and family members grasp on this side of heaven.
Thankfully, God
brought me out of that pit. In doing so, he restored my hope. I think he also
left a small dose of doubt, as a reminder and as something he uses to bolster
my faith. And now, hope is what gets my feet out of bed. It’s what moves me to
help orphans in Africa and to volunteer with local homeless outreaches.
For me, hope
provides the confidence that my future is secure. It gives me comfort in my loneliness.
It allows me to be content in my circumstances. I’ve discovered firsthand, that
Andy Dufresne was right. He may not have had a Jesus-filled hope, but,
nonetheless, I know that hope, even when cloaked in doubt, never dies.
Hope tells me
that we don’t have to look to governments and politicians to fix this weary
world. Hope says that the baby who was born in that manger is the one who will restore
this world to the way it was meant to be, one doubting heart at a time.
For me that is
thrilling. And I think the world … though waiting and weary as it may be, is
still rejoicing.
Merry, Merry
Christmas everybody.
