HOPE, IMPOSSIBLY

Hope is always on our minds at Christmastime, isn’t it? We hope we haven’t left anyone off our gift list. We hope we get invited to the party, fix the decorations just right, and remember the kids’ costumes for the play. The kids hope it snows– we hope it doesn’t. There’s a lot of hope floating around before we even get to the day that Hope was born.

When we read the Christmas story, we find a story shrouded in mystery and stunning in its simplicity. An angel appears to Mary, a young virgin, and declares that she will become pregnant and give birth to God’s son, the long-awaited Messiah. “How?” asks a puzzled Mary. And the angel’s answer, rich with the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit, includes a promise: “Nothing is impossible with God.” Mary answers, with simple faith, “I’m in.”

Thus begins Mary’s journey of hope. Surely, she fears that her fiancé, Joseph, won’t believe her, yet she trusts that the impossible will work out. Putting feet to that belief, Mary hurries to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, who is much too old to bear a child. The angel who had visited Mary had offered Elizabeth’s pregnancy as proof of the impossible. Through Elizabeth’s greeting, “You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what He said,” Mary’s hope becomes certainty. The certainty becomes months of hopeful waiting until the Child is born and Hope is fulfilled for all times.

As I write this, people in the North Carolina mountains are scrambling under blue October skies to haul their lives out of the mud Hurricane Helene left behind. The catastrophe has been unfathomable. Imagine everything you own in two piles in your yard. Everything. Furniture, clothing, photos, mementos. Birth certificates. Grandma’s quilt. And deciding what can be salvaged, and what must go. For some families, nothing can be saved. Some homes might be restored after tearing out the interior sheetrock and floors. Some homes are ruined beyond restoration.

Imagine the hopelessness. The impossibility of life ever returning to normal. And yet, when I read online accounts, countless people have arrived to help. I notice these phrases repeated: “We’re bringing hope.” “We’re creating hope.” One friend, using his talent and equipment in the disaster relief effort, wrote, “It sounds simple, but repairing a driveway gives someone hope that they haven’t been forgotten.”  Boots on the ground is what I’m talking about. Getting dirty, shoulder to shoulder, with the hurting. It’s when we reach a hand to pull someone out of the mud that hope rises.

We’re not meant to be idle. We were created to do something. There’s an astonishing story in the Bible that takes place many years after the Christmas story. In the story, Jesus encounters a man who’s been an invalid for thirty-eight years, apparently wallowing in self-pity all that time. When Jesus sees him, he doesn’t get on the ground and wallow with him. Really, he doesn’t seem to show the man any sympathy. Rather curtly, he says, “Get up! Pick up that filthy mat and walk!” And the man does walk. It’s in the doing that the impossible becomes possible.

My husband and I received a refresher in this lesson just this week. Our fifty-foot bit of paradise on the New River was hard hit by the hurricane. I won’t recount our losses here. As my husband says, our experience is an inconvenience when compared to the horrific losses of others. Still, it’s been enough to overwhelm us. Where do we begin removing entire logs and a ton of debris stuck twelve-feet high in our walnut tree? We arrived at the scene after the water receded to find two neighbors already hard at work with two excavators, hauling and burning wood and making a mountain of metal to recycle. We learned that when we sit still, we despair. When we get to work, dragging what debris we could handle alongside our good neighbors, hopelessness recedes. The impossible becomes a little less frightening, less daunting. We have hope.

Our experience cannot compare to those who have lost homes, livelihoods, even family members. My point is that when we move beyond despair into action, we find hope. And when we as humans do what we can to help those who are hurting, then our combined hopes bring light and life to impossible situations.

When Jesus is born, a star shines down. Angels sing. Lowly shepherds and wealthy wise men come to visit. All is beautiful and peaceful for a time, and then Mary is given a divine message that because of her Son’s destiny, “a sword will pierce your very soul.” Soon after, we find the Holy family fleeing to Egypt to escape the wrath of a jealous king.

Life isn’t always beautiful and peaceful. Sometimes it’s painful. Sometimes life feels impossible.

This Christmas, as we talk about hope and sing about the peace and joy that Jesus was born to bring, let’s remember the truth that Jesus also came to serve. And that His earthly life shows us how to serve in love. Because of Christmas, Hope, impossibly, can change the world.