Hidden Hope
Uncertainty is the refuge of hope.
We are all touched by something that may or may not be the presence of God, though many of us would sooner be shot than say so. In my experience, whatever we call “God” comes quietly, in ways that stay elusive and ambiguous. Our certainty comes later, if it comes at all. There is always room for doubt, just as there must be room to breathe.
For readers who do not identify as Christian, it is worth recalling that Jesus did not claim to be a final verdict. He called himself the way, the truth, and the life—offered freely, never forced, and spoken to anyone willing to hear.
This Sunday is the First Sunday of Advent, the start of a new church year and the countdown to Christmas. Advent comes from the Latin adventus, “coming” or “arrival,” pointing to both the birth of Jesus Christ and the promise of his return, when God’s love will reach its completion.
Advent arrives abruptly after Thanksgiving and disappears just as fast, lost in short days, deadlines, travel, and the seasonal strain that frays even the calmest among us. It is over almost as soon as we remember it started.
When Advent is noticed at all, it’s often through what might be called the “Hallmark Channel Industrial Complex”—fireside carols, a gentle snowfall, a mistletoe kiss. Sentimentality can be a welcome break from cynicism. It simply has little to do with the tough tenderness of Christ. Hope can look like a polite refusal to accept a world that scares us half to death.
A voice I trust is Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and social critic. He wrote that our task is to “seek and find Christ in our world as it is, not as it might be,” because Christ is already present and his purpose “neither frustrated nor changed.” Advent, he said, is the season that names this hope. What’s uncertain is not Christ’s coming, but our readiness to meet him.
Christ’s presence in this world is not sectarian. It includes solidarity with all who do not belong and who are pushed to the margins of church and society. He enters this world with Israelis and Palestinians, Ukrainians and Sudanese, Ethiopians and Afghans, and many others caught in war and displacement; with LGBTQ+ people who still face exclusion and violence; with refugees, migrants, and undocumented families seeking safety; with all who live forgotten or afraid. Christ stands where the world looks away.
The novelist Frederick Buechner, writing about faith and fiction, said that fiction “shapes, fashions, feigns,” and that faith does something similar. You make your faith from the raw material of your life: what has happened and what you cannot help but hope for. And then, Buechner adds, you learn not to impose a shape on it but to uncover the shape already there. You listen. You give real freedom to what emerges.
Annie Dillard wrote that the line of words reveals its path only as you write it. Faith does the same, showing its shape only when you stop trying to force one.
Let life speak for itself, our life included, the way Jesus did with his parables. He did not preach abstractions about poverty or injustice, alienation or estrangement. He told stories from ordinary life: the Good Samaritan, the Workers in the Vineyard, the Prodigal Son.
When his disciples asked why he spoke that way, Jesus said, “Let those who have ears hear.” The first irony is that the question came from those who were not hearing. The second is that the line still applies to us precisely when we think it doesn’t.
And it remains so. Jesus did not say he was the answer; he said he was the way. He did not ask us to succeed, but to be faithful. He did not promise that our beliefs would prove true; he promised to be with us to the end of the world, and beyond. Advent says, “Come, Lord Jesus, come.”
A walking song taken from The Lord of the Rings puts it plainly:
“The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then?
I cannot say.”
So be it.
Notes and reading
The Clown in the Belfry—Frederick Buechner (1992). And A Room Called Remember (1992). Buechner was an acclaimed novelist and Presbyterian minister, author of ten novels and ten works of nonfiction, as well as the memoirs The Sacred Journey and Now and Then.
Thomas Merton: Essential Writings (2000). Fr. Merton was a Trappist contemplative whose writings reshaped modern spirituality—one of the twentieth century’s most luminous voices on prayer and peace.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (1989), where she observes that a line of words discloses its path only in the act of writing. Dillard is the Pulitzer-winning essayist of nature and attention.
“The Road Goes Ever On” was a walking song by J.R.R. Tolkien, written fictionally by Bilbo Baggins; verses of it are sung at various points in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and later set to music as part of a song-cycle with that title.
God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2012). Bonhoeffer was the pastor-theologian martyred for resisting Hitler; his witness against Nazism remains a moral landmark.
A wonderful encapsulation of Jesus as I'm coming to know him: "Jesus did not say he was the answer; he said he was the way. He did not ask us to succeed, but to be faithful. He did not promise that our beliefs would prove true; he promised to be with us to the end of the world, and beyond."
The Gospels compel us to both wonder and wander. It's almost as if wondering won't come without an inclination to wander. Fiction and the act of writing share elements of this wandering, this discovery along unknown paths. What a gentle invitation in these opening strains of Advent.
Thank you, William. Season's greetings.