Day 1 • The Week of Hope

Scripture Readings:
Mark 13:24-37
Isaiah 64:1-9
Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19
1 Corinthians 1:3-9

“Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”
-Proverbs 13:12

I remember the first time these words from Proverbs 13:12 really hit me. I had just moved across the country from Idaho to Kansas City for seminary. I was in a new place where I didn’t know anyone to start a new phase of life I was so unsure about. The house I signed a rental agreement for looked great online but upon moving in, I quickly discovered it was bug infested, drafty, and falling apart. On top of that, I had just gone through a really tough break up. I was lonely, uncertain, heartbroken, and awash with questions about what brought me to this point. Then I read that proverb, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.”

I still remember sitting in that house, which was slowly being reclaimed by the earth, and tearfully writing, “that’s how I feel. My heart is sick.” In that moment, my heart was heavy with weight of so many hopes being deferred. The hope of being in love. The hope of being married. The hope of being sure about my direction in life. It is so disorienting and heartbreaking when your hopes not only go unfulfilled, but are dashed. What are we to do in spaces like that?

This is a similar place Isaiah was speaking from in 64:1-9. Go give it a quick read if you haven’t already. Can you feel the longing in the very first verse? “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (64:1). What an evocative phrase! As you read through this section, you can get a real sense of all that was going on in Israel at that time. They were at odds with other nations and had enemies (64:2). They were reckoning with their own mistakes and brokenness (64:6). They were feeling like they have fallen out of favor with God (64:9).

This section is actually in the middle of a prayer of lament, which spans from 63:7–64:12. The prophet is lamenting Israel’s current circumstances, wondering out loud how they may have played a part in differing what they have been hoping for, and asking for God to intervene. “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.” I think we can all relate to being in similar circumstances like this on an individual level in our own lives.

One of the most humorous parts of this passage is the kind of half- apology in 64:5, “But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.” Put another way, “Sorry, but you were mad and weren’t speaking to us so we acted out so you would pay attention to us.” Having all formally been children ourselves at one point, I think we can all resonate with that mentality, too. For me, at least, this “apology” reveals the real and raw disorienting state of hopelessness. It reveals the hopelessness of feeling like God is so far away that God must not care. It reveals the angry desperation of “well, I guess nothing really matters after all. I guess I’m going to just live however I want. If God really cares, God will say or do something.”

This is a very human prayer, complaint, confession, and plea. The prophet is asking God to not only close the physical and relational distance between them and God, but to mend all their personal, communal, and political wounds as well. Total restoration.

How often have we felt this way and made the same prayer during this previous year? How often have we prayed similar prayers for the world around us? For the state of Christianity in America? For the senseless violence and war to cease? For strength as our own personal hopes are differed? When we look at the times we have felt this way I think we will find it easy to see how connected our personal circumstances are to the world around us. When we do, we might pray to God, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”

The Hebrew word that most English translations of the Bible translate as “tear open” here in 64:1 is qāraʿtā, which is almost exclusively used to describe the “rending of garments” in the rest of scripture. In the culture of ancient Israel, rending one’s garments was a public sign of lament, sorrow, and grief. What is so powerful and poetic about the prophet using this expression here is while they are publicly lamenting and grieving their circumstances, they are also inviting God to enter into their world of grief and do the same. To rip open the barriers that separate them from God, them from each other, and hope from fulfillment. If you read all the scripture readings for today, you will find this same theme throughout. The longing for God to come and heal all wounds and fulfill the hope of the world.

As Christians, we celebrate at Christmas how God did that very thing. God saw a world in need, “tore heaven open” and became one of us out of love for us. As my favorite line from the Christmas carol “O Little Town Of Bethlehem” says, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

Yet, we are not just celebrating that Jesus came into the world, we are also preparing for Christ to return and make all things right (Mark 13:24-37). We are celebrating what has been and stoking our hope for what could be. What will be.

What we learn from this is the power of lamenting prayer. Lament helps us give a voice to what breaks our hearts and makes them sick. When we do that, we are also naming what we hope for and making room for God to come and renew our hope once again.

Reflection steps:

As you ponder this theme today, take special notice of those tender places in your heart that are still sick from hopes being dashed in the past, maybe even write them down. Tell God how you felt in those situations, even if it was abandonment. Then take special notice of the hopes that have been fulfilled, write those down too. Tell God about the “tree of life” that fulfillment has become for you. Then finally reflect on the things you are still hoping for, maybe write those down too. Ask for Jesus for clarity and peace as you await their fulfillment.