Easter

I wonder this day about the gift we know as hope. I've been pondering the notion that good Friday is more akin to a 'glass is half empty' kind of perspective than an Easter as a 'glass half full'. I guess one of the challenges that I'm often faced with is trying to use limited words and images to describe a profound and unlimited reality...God and hope. As we are so entrenched in our world and constantly aware of the deep brokenness that exists in and around everywhere we turn, how is it that we can speak of hope? Is hope some empty wish that helps us, for at least a moment, to escape the sober reality of today?

Recently I read an interesting twist on the notion of hope suggesting that life is not meant to be lived as constant happiness but confident sadness. I like this. I like this idea that hope is realistic by allowing the glass to remain half empty, void, but suggesting that it's not the totality of all that exists in the glass, perhaps even beyond the glass. It seems to me that the promise of Easter lies in the idea of looking at life, in all its brokenness, and still seeing it as worthy to be cared for, sustained, loved, held. What if the reality of hope was more about a place of knowingly being held by God than an attempt to hold on to God in all our sophisticated theological notions of God?

Jesus breaking free from the tomb maybe gives us a glimpse into the idea that nothing keeps God bound up, nothing ultimately keeps God held down. Perhaps the hope of Easter is not even my hope to begin with, as if it only belongs to me like my car or house or computer. That Jesus comes back again maybe speaks to the sense that humanity is never left behind and that in many ways, like a friend we never expected to see again, who shows up and around, we are brought to a place, a new place, of understanding, of being known and loved and held for the pure worth of who God says that we are, not for what we can achieve, but primarily because of who we are for God. Perhaps the hope of which we speak about in Easter is not really ours to begin with, but truly and deeply God's. It is God's Easter hope. Perhaps it is God's hope that we at times get glimpses to see, experience and sometimes even to know. And perhaps, it is enough to say that God's hope for humanity and all creation exists because God chooses to come back to us, to live with us and through us, and to hold us along our way. Maybe God's hope is embodied rather than described.

Dear Jesus, I'm not sure I understand this 'hope' thing, but I'm really trying. I'm beginning to get a sense that maybe you do and that somehow I'm supposed to be a part of it. Help me not so much to hold on to hope, as to learn to be grasped by it, in whatever way that may look, feel and be experienced in and through my life. Amen.