The images, stories and interviews of Ukrainians have been heartbreaking and also extraordinarily inspiring. There has been the acknowledgement of the reality of fear and loss, and also the display of courage and resolve born of hope, despite the grimness of circumstances. Images grab my heart, a picture of a child’s pained, hysterical face. And the picture of an older woman trying to get across a destroyed bridge with only one possession, her small dog, in her arms. It is heartbreaking to see the suffering.
We live by hope. Hope can keep us from giving up, can help us pick ourselves up again after we have fallen down, or reach for something that might seem beyond our grasp. Hope can be extraordinarily powerful in life. Dante reinforced its fundamental importance with his description of the words above the gates of hell “Abandon hope all who enter here.”
But we also need to examine our hopes. We can find ourselves carried away by false hopes, promises of happiness that don’t really satisfy, or live with diminished hopes that cause us to miss what we are actually capable of doing. We can live with hopes that ignore the dangers or that absolve us of responsibility to others.
The second petition of the Lord’s prayer is about the subject of hope.
We are invited to pray about hopes we have and to examine the hopes with which we live. The petition gives us a specific object for which to pray. The ultimate hope is for the Kingdom of God come here, with its peace and justice, beauty and goodness, love and generosity. This hope is also about the life we were made for. The prayer invites us to believe and to trust that the Kingdom is coming and to live in a way that is aligned with that expectation.
Real hope is not cheap. We sense that when we watch the stories of the people of Ukraine. Some seem to know exactly what they can and need to do. Others are still looking for a part to play. But hope requires something of each of us.
Seeking the part we can play in relieving suffering and encouraging others is holy work. Living with hope for the coming Kingdom only strengthens the resolve to seek to play our part here and now. In the New Testament letter to the Hebrews, we are encouraged to fix our eyes on Jesus “who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising its shame.” His life was also a model of the hope we have been given that empowers our best and most impactful life with confidence that the best is yet to come.
