ISBC 39 - Hope as Protest

Chapter 39 of Hope: A User's Manual

This reflection moves into the final section of Hope: A User’s Manual.  As I’ve shared several times before, please pick up MaryAnn’s book from whatever bookseller you frequent and also check out her page, The Blue Room with MaryAnn McKibben Dana here on Substack as well.

This is a weird picture for today but it is the tracking from my fitness app of the walk my daughter and I took about a week ago (at the time of writing).

Any guesses of what we were doing?  If you guessed that we were canvassing and knocking on doors, you’re right.  Each one of those little points that jut out from the longer lines is a driveway or a front walk that we walked up to, knocked on a door, rang a doorbell, and then waited.  Most of the time, no one came to the door.  Either they weren’t home or their video doorbell showed them two people they didn’t want to open the door to.  But there were a few - maybe 10 of the houses where someone answered.  Some were brief conversations and one was a little bit longer.

It was a similar “response rate” to the other Saturdays that I had been knocking on doors.  You see, I have made a commitment to do canvassing for the upcoming election most every Saturday between now and November.  This is important work but dang it can feel discouraging wondering whether these conversations, or the literature drops, or any of it really matters.  How many of those flyers are just going straight in a recycle bin?  How many of those who I talk to are just being polite or are they genuinely interested in talking about what’s coming up?

I, and others, are also spending time writing postcards to voters in swing states encouraging them to not only get registered (if they aren’t yet) but to plan to vote and to vote a specific way.  How many of those postcards will be looked at, tossed in a recycle bin, and then promptly forgotten about?   

Two quotes from this chapter really stood out to me around this...

But Jeremiah had no foreknowledge of an end date to the exile, nor whether that end would even come. What he had was hope and a willingness to act as if that hope had already been realized.

In the wake of the injustices and indignities plaguing us, living my life as undying protest seems feeble. But it’s a way of joining with prophets like Jeremiah, of participating with his insolent no against the idea that God’s people would be forsaken and adrift forever. Some days, I don’t feel hope. But you don’t need to feel hope in order to stand up and say no.¹

It is similar to how I often feel as a pastor.  When I lead a Bible study, have a pastoral conversation, pray with someone, lead in worship, share a sermon, officiate at a wedding or a funeral, or even sit through a ministry team meeting...it is easy to wonder if I am making any kind of difference.  But there are moments that remind me that yes I am and that reminds me that there are moments that happen I probably do not know about and that speaks to me that there might be something I share that might seem to be forgotten but then emerges months or years later.

These actions are sowing seeds.  My job is to sow the seeds, whether it is in my ministry role as a pastor or when my wife and I are parenting our children or as my daughter and I are out knocking on doors on a Saturday morning.  We sow the seeds and trust that the seeds will take root and grow and bloom .

Grace, Peace, Love, and Joy,
Ed

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1. McKibben Dana, MaryAnn. Hope: A User's Manual (p. 166 & 167). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.