Conversation Point

In This Moment

Hope and Creation

Welcome to the new year. As Christmas decorations come down, resolutions arise as the new dawn of our existence. A renewed commitment to weight loss is the number one New Year's resolution in the United States. Perhaps because so many of us overindulge with food and spirits the last weeks of the year, this need to bring our bodies back to their pre-holiday shapes is uppermost in our minds, and solidly on our scales. The simple reality is that a rollover of the calendar doesn't serve up an entirely new life along with the last piece of Christmas candy.

More than most of us this new year, the residents of New Orleans face evidence of this fact every day. Talk of Mardi Gras plans is measured against piles of debris still parked curbside in every neighborhood. Bathtubs and toilets perch unnaturally on front lawns and roofs. Many businesses remain closed as electricity inches its way back to the city as a whole. Large sections of New Orleans are isolated in their emptiness, awaiting the return of its people, a reversal of the exodus that may not come. Jobs lost to the hurricane-induced flood waters are gone. What was New Orleans simply is not anymore, and most likely never will be again. Most poignant in all the recent follow-up stories about Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, was a woman quoted in my local paper as saying, "I just want it all back. I want it all back the way it was."

Although we have not all faced the devastating effects of Katrina, many of us have addressed life-altering events that made us wish for what was, the familiar life that can only be retrieved temporarily in photographs and memories. Because we can't hold onto the old, or leap forward into a whole new future, we stand in the present, feeling as if we have taken steps into a foreign land that now holds us captive against our will. "If only," invades our souls as insistent stabs of remorse and guilt that isolate us further and further, until we have created islands inside ourselves, of ourselves, that serve no purpose, especially life. Many of us have lost parents, some children. Others of us have endured traumatic illness, accidents we thought would kill us, or have supported a loved on through the experience. We understand the anguish of being caught between yearning for what was , and searching for signs of what will be.

It is understandable, it is human, to place our hope in the past, on what we have known, and that with which we have felt comfort. But it is also futile.

Hope is a verb that implies forward thinking and forward movement. Hope is active, and although sometimes excruciatingly painful to consider, contains deep power to heal us, help us see the future, and live again. "For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what they see? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8: 24-25)." As we begin to look for hope around us, we witness its tangible proof, bit by bit, and soon enough, its fulness surrounds us.

Even as New Orleans residents stand as testimonies to resilience, strength of character and faith, some of what they have lost to the waiting for sighs of hope is being given over to this new creation that is still their city, and their home. Mardi Gras is being planned. The French Quarter is open for business. Pile by pile the rubble is being hauled away. Homeowners are coming back to their properties, and some have already rebuilt in areas where no one else has been able to believe others will follow. For whatever reason, these who have made the pilgrimage and recreated home are able to embody this hope, and believe it surrounds them. Does this feel like a modern miracle to you? It certainly does to me. Some miracles take a little more time to reveal themselves than others, but they are miracles nonetheless.

Until next time, God's blessings.

posted by Cory L. Kemp @ 5:39 PM