Hope is a risk.
When encountering difficulties, it is a good practice to turn to the Lord in prayer. And while there are many true sayings like “God is faithful” and “trust in God” and “God provides” and on and on, there is never a guarantee that God will act in the way that I want Him to act. It is true that God is all good and that He uses all things for good. It is also true that God has a more beautiful plan for our lives than we do. He is faithful, He is just, He loves us beyond measure.
And yet.
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were still thrown into the fiery furnace.
Daniel was put in the lion’s den.
The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years.
John the Baptist was beheaded for proclaiming uncomfortable truths.
Jesus was crucified.
Rome was converted by the blood of martyrs.
St. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake after a sham trial which declared her a heretic.
St. Jeanne Jugan was sidelined and isolated in the very religious community she started.
Bl. Franz Jägerstätter refused to fight for the Nazis and was imprisoned before being executed.
St. Carlo Acutis died as a teenager after a battle with leukemia.
It seems important to remember that in all of these situations, God provided.
For the first four men, there was a miracle which prevented them from dying in the manner their persecutors planned. But for so many throughout the ages, God’s method of bringing about the greatest good can only be seen in glimpses, darting around the edges of our comprehension as we risk being overrun by the sorrow and pain which is so easy to perceive. There are many things which will only properly be understood from the perspective of eternity, from the view which God has as He weaves lives together and pulls beauty from sorrow.
However, it can be too easy to just quit praying, declaring that it doesn’t matter if we pray because God does whatever He is going to do. We can simply be resigned, trying not to care too much either way, denying that we have feelings and instead insisting that all is as it should be.
Hope, in many ways, is the riskiest option. The challenging task of seeking the fulfillment we desire in the moment while remaining focused on the eternal. There are so many hopes I have in my life, so many desires I want the Lord to fulfill. And I often have very particular ways I would like the Lord to fulfill these longings. The question isn’t if God loves me or will provide or if He is good or if He should be trusted. All of those things are true. But it seems to be the task of a lifetime to entrust our desires to the Lord, knowing He may choose to work in a different way, and yet have hope that, come what may, all will be truly, eternally good.
In all situations and in all sufferings, hope is possible. I say this without quite knowing how it is possible and with several experiences in life when it definitely felt impossible. Yet I have also been drawn to saints who have become saints through intense trials, saints who continued to be faithful to the Lord even when things looked bleak and when, from our finite human view, things never got better.
St. Edith Stein/Teresa Benedicta of the Cross was a brilliant woman who wrestled with truth, eventually converting to Catholicism. Her Jewish mother was horrified by this conversion. The desire of Edith’s heart was to enter a Carmelite monastery after her conversion, but she, for various reasons, waited for around twelve years before finally entering. With the rise of Nazism, she was later moved to a convent in the Netherlands for her protection. Despite that effort, she was arrested in early August of 1942 and shortly afterwards on August 9th died in the Auschwitz concentration camp’s gas chambers along with her sister Rosa.
Dear wife, do not be worried about me. I have more confidence in the Lord God than in our Farmers’ Association. And if things should come about different from what we hope for and would like, they would not be bad because God’s will comes about, even when painful.
(Franz Jägerstätter: Letters and Writings from Prison, pg. 39, letter from Franz to Franziska and Lorenz, November 27, 1940)
Bl. Franz Jägerstätter was a simple Austrian farmer, with a bit of a wild past, who refused to bend his conscience to any immoral authority. He was the sole member of his town who voted against Austria being annexed by Germany. Though he went to his initial military training, he wrestled intensely with whether or not he could actually fight for the Nazis when he knew the evil they were perpetuating. Yet if he resisted, he knew the personal cost and how it would leave his wife and children without him. Church authorities encouraged him to do his patriotic duty and enter military service, but he still could not violate his conscience. On August 9th, 1943, he was guillotined for his refusal to fight for the Nazis.
There are so many others who don’t have a “happy ending” as the world would understand it or for whom “it will all work in the end” means ‘the end of time.’ So many saints who had incredibly things happen after their deaths or even because of their deaths. And yet they did not have the chance to see what would unfold except from the glory of Heaven. St. Maximilian Kolbe transformed a starvation chamber with his prayerful witness and later was executed by lethal injection. St. Jeanne Jugan, who invited a poor woman to live with her, started what eventually became the Little Sisters of the Poor yet was removed from her leadership position by a forceful priest, endured her role being hidden from the rest of the community, and died in obscurity. Venerable Elisabeth Leseur loved her atheist husband despite him mocking her faith, suffered with numerous physical ailments, and whose diary, when read by her husband after her death, prompted his conversion and his eventual ordination to the priesthood.
The history of the Church and the world is replete with people who hoped in what God could do and faithfully persisted when it appeared the hope was fruitless and their lives seemed a sorrowful waste. With God, hope is never a waste. It might always be a risk, but it is also always a risk with great rewards. I cannot see what God will do my continued Yes to follow Him, my decision to choose hope when indifference or despair seem more logical, or how the persistence of hope will shape my heart to more like our Lord’s heart.
Though I do not know if what I particularly hope for will be the thing the Lord provides, I am striving to believe that whatever God provides will be good.
Despite how it might appear, despite what it might cost, regardless what my earthly senses perceive, the Lord is providing good things for me now and always.
The hope is worth the risk.
Seeking After His Heart 