Thrilled by Hope

“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.