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I would have preferred that all of the election hubbub would have died down by now. Alas. There are a lot of Christians still in mourning regarding the next four years in the United States, and there are also many swimming in a sense of euphoria. Apparently the winner of the recent election will either solidify the implosion of our nation or cause the Kingdom of the Heavens to drop down among us, unhindered, in its full glory.

Let me reiterate: all of this passion and certainty exhibited by many of my fellow Christians is based on an election. This is very interesting to me, that so much of who we think we will become seems to have already been decided by a show of hands last Tuesday. Disappointment or encouragement based on democratic outcomes, I can understand. Devastation or elation, however, strike me as naive responses. Do we really believe that the best or the worst is now destined to happen? That we can now sit back and let the dominoes fall as they will?

Having written quite a bit about hope recently, I’m especially disheartened (read: dumbfounded) by how some people (mostly white, evangelical Christians) have allowed their hope to be stolen by an election that didn’t go the way they wanted it to go. Literally. I’m talking despair and dire prophecies about the future. Warnings of impending doom. Cries that they have lost their liberty.

The end is near.

Apparently.

* * * * *

Remember how those guys in the book of Matthew tried to stick Jesus in a difficult spot by asking him about paying the imperial tax to Caeser?

“Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

Tough one. If Jesus says yes, then he’s endorsing the brutal, Roman occupation. If he says no, then these guys can report him to the local government for fomenting resistance and he’ll be imprisoned or executed.

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

I love that.

“Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

* * * * *

Consider the following verse:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the winner of the recent election resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:3) (emphasis and strike-through mine).

Christians, stop belly-aching (or partying) about the recent election results. Get busy doing what God has called you to do. Maybe the election result will make your current mission easier. Maybe it will make it more challenging. Whatever.

“Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

Christians, regardless of your political leanings, can we somehow remember that it’s because of his great mercy that we’ve been born again to a living hope? There are probably a few things you should be giving back to Caesar. I’m fairly certain that hope isn’t one of them.

Have you ever approached a difficult time in your life only for God to sort of step back and say, “Good luck!” You enter the darkness and you wonder what the heck you’re doing there and you start to have serious discussions with yourself in your own head about turning back or moving forward. Giving up or going on.

If so, you know how Bilbo feels in The Hobbit when Gandalf leaves him and the dwarfs to walk the dark path through Mirkwood alone. They run out of food. They run out of energy. They run out of ideas. At one point, the dwarfs convince Bilbo to climb a tree just to see if there’s any sight of the forest’s edge. Are they close? Are they almost through?

Bilbo climbs up among the tree tops. He feels a beautiful breeze. He smiles at the dancing butterflies. But all that he can see, stretching for mile after mile, is the endless forest. He returns to the forest floor, depressed. And because he had seen nothing good to report, the entire company lost their hope.

* * * * *

This is the problem we face, isn’t it? Year after year, we feed our hope with such meager things. But the time eventually comes when we want to SEE the goal – not just sense it. Not just believe it’s getting close. So we stop hiking, we climb a tree, and we look around.

And we see nothing but an endless path through a dark and tangled wood.

But this is the problem with depending on our sight, the problem with limiting our hope to what we can see with our own eyes. Bilbo couldn’t recognize the fact that the tree he climbed was in a massive hollow surrounded by swells and that, in fact, just beyond the next small hill was the end of the forest road. He lost his hope, and very soon after, because he had no hope, he lost his way.

* * * * *

Too often we allow the level of our hope to hinge on that which we can see.

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen… Hebrews 11:1

Which I guess is why the best thing to do when the time comes to give up is to keep going.

We’ll give her back to you in about an hour and a half.

I sit in the hospital cafe, drinking Starbucks-in-a-glass-jar. I glance at the window to see if this winter storm has arrived but it gets dark early these days, and all I see is my own reflection against the premature night. The cafe is mostly empty, save a few nurses who talk in hushed tones and laugh to themselves. I imagine it must feel good, having a chance to laugh after hours of trying not to seem too carefree in the face of patients’ uncertainty.

Strange that it takes a visit to the hospital to remember how blessed I am. How we have a wonderful place to live, even if it is subterranean, and how those four kids will swarm us when we walk through the door. How the older two will sit and listen to me read The Hobbit, marveling at a world of goblins and wizards and adventure that leads to a dragon, then home again. How the younger two, since the time change has their sleep confused, climb into bed with us each morning, coaxing and squirming and cuddling.

Such blessed confusion.

There really is so much good in my life. So many reasons to hope, in spite of difficult circumstances. So many reasons to trust, even when I can’t see very far on a cold, almost-winter’s night.

Mr. Smucker? You can come back to see her now.

What can creativity do?

Four blog posts from other parts of the interwebs that you should read:

* * * * *

Real Life, I think as we move in this car toward an unknown sea. We are always moving toward it. And what if it is the real life? This world, only virtual, only words on a screen. But in that one, we will finally know. We will finally be known.

* * * * *

The widow and her mother came through the door.  And we found out the deceased was only 36 years old.  Five years older than me.  Too young.

* * * * *

In general, I don’t think that Christians should register with political parties.

* * * * *

Indeed. Today I will pray, and I will vote, then I will do my best to laugh, dance, and shout—to do whatever I need to do to praise God for this most wonderful truth. A new creation is in his hands, unswayed by all that sways us, undivided by all that divides us.

We arrive at the house where we hope to move soon. This cold November day smells of wet earth and autumn leaves. We meander around the place, peeking in through the windows, noting the things that have been accomplished since our last visit. The kids shout at each other and their voices disappear in the woods.

There’s hope hidden around here somewhere: hope that things are turning for the better. Hope that after nine months in cramped quarters (a bus, then a basement), we will all be able to stretch our wings a bit. There’s hope found in the smell of new seasons and in the growing pile of wood with which we plan to heat the house.

This is what I’m learning these days: even when my hope in “big” things diminishes, there are still the very small shoots of green to look for. It’s harder work, unearthing these hidden hints of good things to come, but the hard work of searching for small hopes begins to shape my heart, prepares it to better hold the good things to come.

* * * * *

In the Old Testament, one of the transliterated Hebrew words used for hope is Yachal. It generally means “to hope,” but there’s also a subtle nuance to the word that hints at waiting, even delaying or wasting time. There’s very little of the sudden, when it comes to Yachal. It feels to me like a slow building, a determination, a yoga posture of the soul.

This word Yachal is used mainly in two Old Testament books. The first book is easy to guess: Psalms. Psalms seems a fitting place to go while waiting for hope. While treading slowly through the valley of the shadow. While drinking from the icy springs of a waterfall, eyes closed.

But the Old Testament book with the second most uses of Yachal surprised me: Job. It would appear that the story of a man losing everything oozes with hope.

Though He slay me, I will hope in Him.

If a man dies, will he live again? All the days of my struggle I will wait until my change comes.

Behold, I waited for your words, I listened to your reasonings…

Perhaps this is the great lesson of hope, that it is not a gift for the rich or the full, the content or the comfortable. It’s not something strewn far and wide to the unappreciative masses. Hope is offered to those who need it most: namely, those who sometimes feel they have the least reason to believe in it.

* * * * *

We herd the kids back into the warm van and buckle them in. Then Maile and I walk back through the surprisingly green yard and up into the woods. Along the path paved with yellow leaves. We turn right where the path turns left. Quietly. And there sits a small pile of rocks the children helped us gather not three weeks ago.

Warm in the earth beneath those stones lies a box. And in that box is a small baby’s nightgown my sister gave to us prior to Maile’s miscarriage last month. The two of us stand there by the pile of rocks. I stare off into the woods, and for the first time Maile doesn’t cry. She simply takes a deep breath, then exhales a cloudy burst of breath.

“Okay,” she says quietly, and we turn and walk back to the warm van filled with our four shouting kids. But my mind is still thinking about the small pile of rocks, and out of nowhere I remember the word etched on the top of the buried box:

HOPE