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PAUSE FOR THOUGHT: REVEREND JANE LEACH

While waiting in the queue to order a coffee recently, I overheard a conversation between a brightly dressed customer and the barista who, by the look on her face, was clearly half way through a long shift. Picking up on her mood the customer asked the barista what she was looking forward to? When met with a blank look, the customer said, ‘It’s always important to have something to look forward to’.

In the middle of a long shift, or of a long recession, or of a long period of illness, it is not always easy to find something to look forward to. And even if we can plan a trip to the cinema or a holiday in the sun or a family reunion, this may only be a short respite from the realities of the daily routine.

In the Christian tradition hope is not so much about short-term staging posts to get us through. Rather, hope is seen as an anchor which holds us firm even through the storms of life; or as a pulsing beat to which we can return. Hope is about trust and patience.

Writing out of the slums of South America, the Christian thinker, Rubem Alves once said: ‘We must live by the love of what we do not see, and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren.’ His hope, despite the terrible poverty and exploitation around him, was in the love that he believed was at heart of existence. This hope motivated him and others to live and act out of love, rather than cynicism and self-interest.

Hope, in this sense, is a choice, but it need not be blind or groundless. For Christians hope is based on our experience of the goodness of God working in our own lives to overcome destructive patterns of behaviour and cycles of despair.

So even when we are in the middle of that long shift, or long recession, or long period of illness, we are looking to tune in to that pulsing beat, so that we may recognize signs of love at work… trusting that these are the truth about what is at the heart of things, and committing ourselves to amplify, in the world around us, these hopeful sounds.