Often, when we think about hope we think about something we expect to happen in the future. In this way, hope is that thing that has (as of late) frequently disappointed rather than pleased.

I’m quite familiar with theologians, both alive and dead, who have no room for hope in their theologies. I’ve always marveled at such a stance but haven’t judged it because I get it.

When hope fails to produce material or spiritual alterations to our life, extricating it from the burden of bludgeoning demoralization or the monotony of the mundane (the: whatever-it-is-that-has-been-going-on-for-too-long), it makes sense to ditch it.

If my hope keeps presenting as dreaming of phantoms of good and better, rather than material bodily presences, then it’s nothing but that which perpetually disappoints me.

The mythological carrot of sadistic King Future luring on the peasants of the present eager to steal their labor and love.

I think the big problem is that we’ve conflated future expectation and present hope. When I’ve read through the First Testament and the recorded stories of Israel’s journey and walk with God, Israel’s hope in God is a ripe present hope...

...based on historical stories hallmarking the past: "we hope now because God has done…" and "Today we can press on because yesterday God saw us through it."

Hope keeps an eye on history for the present; future expectation uses history as certainty for the future. Future expectation sidesteps the present and anchors what was into what will be and flags are mounted on that moon with vivacity and certainty.

But the problem here is that we are not in a position to substantiate the future with…anything—neither with certain cynicism nor opportunistic optimism. We do not have the ability to throw anything far enough and hard enough into the future to populate it.

I can throw a frisbee pretty far for my dog, and as it soars over the fence, I know I will have to go walking to get it. But every step I take is in the present. I only populate the present and in doing so participate in populating the past.

I can’t penetrate the future; it always remains right outside of my grasp.

If we allow God to be God (the Creator) and humans to be humans (the created, the creature) then what the future is, is God’s alone because that not yet resides yet in God—considering all time is in God.

We can’t declare that x *is* impossible because that’s a substantiation of the future; so to is: x *will* be. The only thing we are given as terminology to speak of tomorrow is the language of possibility and the space of paradox.

What is isn’t ever all there is, thus we live in the collision of that possible and paradox both performing revolutionary resistance to the powers that threaten to take our lives (material, spiritual, social, sexual, financial, political, etc.).

Here in is hope’s realm.

Hope never lays claim to what will be, it doesn’t even pretend to do so (we force it to be our future expectation’s handmaid). Hope always takes up residence in the presence with every anthology of the past stacked against her walls.

Hope whispers to us: what is right now, isn’t all there is right now; there’s more here than meets the eye; all things are possible with God.

Hope latches on to possibility, or maybe hope is the embers of the once raging fire that has become the source of the divine phoenix of possibility rising forth. Hope has eyes to see this one step and not that one may have changed everything.

Hope has the ears to hear the whisper filled wind of history surging and coursing around our fatigued bodies. If I’ve made it this many days, to this spot, can I make it one more? It’s possible.

So, why, in 2021—after so much fighting, so much death, so much struggle, so much violence, loss, pain, suffering, and grief—do we dare to talk about hope? Specifically because we do not know what tomorrow brings, and we are here now.

//fin