My Journey with Hope

My journey to a deeper understanding of hope began in the fall of 2000 when my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

Long before I attended seminary, my understanding of hope had a three-wish limit. The way I treated hope was like a genie in a bottle. I would hope for situations, outcomes, or things as if I were wishing for them. I would often use the word casually. “I hope it doesn’t rain,” “I hope she’s doing okay,” “I hope the sermon isn’t too long.” (Let’s be honest, we’ve all prayed that one). Luther Smith, in his book Hope is Here, describes my early understanding of hope well when he writes, “Hope is used to speak to all matters of desire, optimism, and need.” I limited what hope could do and was doing in my life.

My journey to a deeper understanding of hope began in the fall of 2000 when my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I hoped beyond hope that Dad would be healed, that the cancer would go away. Yet, all the hoping and all the praying did not result in removing his suffering. Nor my suffering watching him suffer.

It wasn’t until I stumbled upon an image of Jesus praying in the garden that I began to rethink prayer, healing, and hope.

As a teenager, I participated in a mission week in Richmond, Virginia, where I was part of a crew that did repairs at Ms. Myrtle’s home. Ms. Myrtle lived alone and had very little. One day, moved by our willingness to come to her home every day that week to help her out, she gathered a bunch of items from around her house. She began to give out the items to each crew member, expressing her gratitude. Everyone except me.

It was an awkward moment. When she realized she had forgotten me, she took a picture she had hanging on her wall and gave it to me. It was a Dollar General-sque framed image of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane before he was arrested. Later that day, Ms. Myrtle took the picture and wrote a note on the back for me. This was the image of Jesus I came across that day when I was struggling with Dad’s cancer.

Holding that picture, it was hard to keep the tears back. I had been asking God for what I wanted, for Dad to be healed by taking the cancer away. I desperately wanted my dad to return to his old self. Yet, this print reminded me of Jesus’ prayer, “Thy will be done.”

In a moment when Jesus knew he was about to face the worst means of suffering possible - public execution by crucifixion - he prayed for God’s will to be done. We know the rest of the story. Jesus surrendered all in that moment, and God changed everything!

After rediscovering that print, I added, “Thy will be done,” to my prayers. Dad did not get better. The cancer did not go away. In fact, it got worse. It spread throughout his body before taking him on Easter Sunday, 2001.

While singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” with the congregation in my small, United Methodist Church, I suddenly stopped singing. I remember standing there, surrounded by family and friends, and hearing the rich four-part harmony and realizing that death is not final. The fear I had of Dad dying slowly oozed out of me and, by the end of the hymn (thank goodness Charles Wesley wrote so many lyrics!), was replaced by assurance and hope in the resurrection.

I came to realize, in a very real way, on that Sunday, that resurrection hope is not the denial of death but the defiance of it. It is a bold and unwavering belief that God’s love is stronger than death. It claims that new life is not only possible, but also promised. Resurrection hope does not erase our pain or skip past the cross. It stares straight into the tomb and declares as triumptantly as we sang Wesley’s hymn, “This is not the end.”Resurrection hope is the kind of hope that walks with us through grief and holds sacred space for sorrow. Yet, it insists that the story will not end in despair.

In a world that knows too much death, whether bodies, dreams, or justice, resurrection hope refuses to let cynicism have the last word. It is the hope that Sunday mornings will break into our Friday nights. It is the hope that calls us to live as the people of the risen Christ.