Hope in Crisis

Normally on Thursdays, I introduce the text of the upcoming sermons with a few guiding questions.  Today, I’m going to step back from that format and talk about hope.

We are the church. We hope.  We sing about hope.  We pray for hope.  We talk a big hope game, that is we act as though we have the hope of Christianity in hand, no questions asked: of course we have hope; we are Christians. But what happens when we fail to hope?  We all do from time-to-time, though we are reluctant to admit so.  We don’t want anyone to know that we have lost our hope, so we come to church with a smile on our face and fear in our hearts.  What do we have without hope – just plain fear.  We fear the unknown; we fear the known; we fear losing God; we fear God losing us; we fear we aren’t doing the right things. A life without hope is full of fear.

In 2021 and 2022, I went just outside of Nashville, TN for training in Spiritual Direction.  It was a big step for me, I had not been long diagnosed with liver metastasis (2020) and I was working in a new school district (2019).  I had made the determination to care for my soul and to learn to teach others how to do so by learning to listen to God, not me as an advice-giver.  It was challenging, even then, for travel and dealing with the side-effects of the oral chemotherapy.

Though the program is not Catholic, we met in a Catholic Retreat House, a beautiful wooden lodge in the middle of the lush trees of Tennessee.  I came a day early to get settled and rest before the retreat began.  As I exited my car, the sweetest 4’10” sister came to greet me, and she hugged me, tightly.  Like my mama. My mama gave the best hugs. In that moment I didn’t know how much I had missed my mother, who died alone in a hospital during Covid-19.  The other sisters huddled around me and fussed over me and carried my bags and I felt so mothered, so beautifully and intentionally mothered by God himself through these precious sisters.

Walking out of the elevator on the second floor, the expansive vista before me thrilled my heart and my eyes, such a beautiful scene.  The sister giving us the tour spun around, her arms extended, causing her habit to flow like the gown of a young princess, a little girl. “Pray Big! You never know what God has for you.  He has the cattle on a thousand hills.”  Her statement was not a name it and claim it assurance; it was the reminder that God wants good for His children.  My heart leapt within me.  I felt God saying, “That’s you, Angie.  Pray Big!” And I came face to face with the reality that I did not have hope; I was afraid to pray for my own healing.  I was perfectly okay for others to pray for me, and I wanted others to pray for me because I couldn’t do it myself.  I was (and am) still untangling my vending-machine theology. I put good in; I get God out: a works-based theology.  In my broken thinking, I kept trying to be “good enough” for God to love me and heal me.  

In the same year (2021), I started reading The Divine Hours by Phillis Tickle as a podcast for my own accountability.  I wanted to challenge myself to be in the Word of God.  I wanted the Word of God to change my broken thinking.  And it has.  I know I can be sorrowful, angry, mad, confused, and just a mess and God loves me the same.  I can rage before God and He listens.  I can be without hope and He restores it.  Like the Psalmist, I can be honest before God and others because I am beginning to understand that I don’t have to conjure my own hope: God gives me hope. I don’t make or fake hope; true hope is a gift from God alone. One of my favorite Psalms (55) is often repeated throughout the liturgical year: “In the morning, in the evening, and at noonday, I will complain and lament, and He will hear my voice.  God who is enthroned of old, will hear me.”  What a gift: to be heard.

Near the end of the retreat, I had built such relationships with my cohorts that I shared with them my health struggles. I never want to be the cancer girl.  I just want to be Angie.  The next year, I shared that I didn’t know how to hope as a Christian with cancer.  Could God heal me? Unequivocally yes! Does God have to heal me?  Absolutely not.  Am I okay with dying?  Completely.  The balance I must strike with (now two) terminal illnesses is to hope in Christ alone. This moment. This day. This hour. This minute. This breath.  I can trust Him with all my emotions.  I can trust Him to give me Hope. I don’t have to pretend or make it seem like everything is okay.

How do you suppose the Israelites felt in Isaiah’s time?  Despairing, without hope, believing, but not really believing.  Then, God’s voice comes thundering through the voice of Isaiah, “In that day the Lord will thresh from the flowing Euphrates to the Wadi of Egypt, and you, Israel, will be gathered up one by one. And in that day a great trumpet will sound. Those who were perishing in Assyria and those who were exiled in Egypt will come and worship the Lord on the holy mountain in Jerusalem.” The Israelites will commune and feast with laughter with the God of their salvation.  As will we.


We learned so much during those two years of Christian Spiritual training, learning about listening to God, playing, relaxing in His presence, enjoying His presence.  My cohort gave me a coloring page about hope, and they all signed the back with notes of encouragement to Hope with me.