With Open Hands
Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Saviour and my God. Psalm 42:11
We can see it so clearly in the poor. With time one’s social and economic difficulties become the inward realities of one’s life. Powerlessness and hopelessness sculpt one’s inner psyche. We call this the internalisation of a culture of poverty. And with its all pervasive presence a fatalism starves the membranes of one’s being of the oxygen of hope.
This disempowering scenario is not restricted to the poor. We all have parts of our life where the doors and windows have been closed, and where we have shut down the possibility of change and renewal. In these empty and barren spaces of our life, we dare not hope for anything better. Better, we say, the pain of not having, than the pain of disappointed hopes.
Bernard Malamud expressed this sentiment through one of his characters; “if you’ve had nothing, you’re afraid of too much.” And to elaborate further, if we have closed down on the possibility of any change, then we are lost in the wasteland of our fears.
It is therefore important that we ask, how may others help us to move beyond this negativity? Do they help by giving what is lacking? Do they pray for the restoration of hope? Do they cast out the spirits of fear and resignation? Do they work for the greater general good in our community so that a greater justice may prevail that will benefit all?
Maybe all, or some, or none of these suggestions will move us in new directions. But people are usually much too quick with their advice and helping strategies. The recovery of hope, and an openness to new possibilities, come so often more as the surprise than through the well-intentioned efforts of others.
The seeds of hope may spring up in a variety of ways. One source of the birth of hope is the willingness to revisit the desolate places of our life, but to do so in the presence of the One who bends towards us with wounded hands. We turn to the One who comes riding not on a victory horse, but on a donkey of shame and rejection.
It is never loss or not-having which in and of itself disempowers us. It is rather that with our loss we feel that we have been abandoned and forgotten. We are lost to others, and thus become lost to ourselves. Thus the recovery of hope lies not so much in receiving hoped for solutions, but in the embrace of the God who suffers for and with us.
Hope is the fruit of the resurrection which reminds us that in God’s scheme of things death does not have the last word. So we are invited to stretch out our limp hands, heavy heart, and fearful disposition towards the God who joins us in our sorrow and invites us to pilgrimage. This forward movement calls us to open our doors, and our hands, so that God can give us the buds of new life.
Reflection
Where are the places in my life that need to be opened to the renewing work of God’s Spirit?
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(c) Charles Ringma, Whispers from the Edge of Eternity: Reflections in Life and Faith in a Precarious World. Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2005, p.55-56