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May/June response: Pray
THIS NEW DAY | God, Our Hope, how can we hold onto hope when storms gather and grow greater each year?
How can we hold onto hope when wars wreak havoc just about everywhere we turn; when killing is rampant and indiscriminate; when schools become shooting galleries; when those willing to serve become targets; when gun barrels peek from bushes at the moment we try to put play back into the day; when ordinary tools of life explode in our hands?
How do we hold onto hope when we have to flee home and family because the crops have failed for the fifth year in a row; because the land on which we stand is sinking into the sea; because our children can no longer go to school; because our town has been reduced to rubble; because our teenagers are tortured, trafficked, and taken into gangs?
How do we hold onto hope when we can almost see the heat rising off the pavement we poured as progress; when the smoke from burning forests is forever fixed in our nostrils; when the air we breathe tastes like plastic; when there is no longer any shade from our own shortsightedness?
How do we hold onto hope when all the words we hear are instructions for insurrection, training for treason, designs for division and destruction, and formulas for hatred and fear?
Maybe, just maybe, we have hope, because we believe in you—a God who has a way of rooting for the poor, of turning things around when all looks forsaken; of reordering the order we think we created; of upending our world views not with violence, but with love and tolerance for the imperfections we all carry; and the amazing ability to make something really good with whatever you have on hand, and whoever is present in the room.
We have hope because you don’t choose sides or pick teams, like some fourth-grade playground captain.
Instead, you work with whoever shows up. You use duct tape and binder twine and stick us all together to make a wonderfully wacky body of Christ, imperfect in our individuality, but abundant in our wholeness. You busted down the gates of hell and came rolling out of the tomb, not resurrected as a mighty warrior, armed with weapons and words, but as a nearly silent gardener ready to get your hands dirty and plant a few seeds of hope on earth.
Help us to remember that you never ended your day with sunset and fire on the horizon and darkness looming. Instead, “There was evening and there was morning, the first day,” And you called it all: “Good. Very good.” Grant us the courage to find hope this new day. Amen.
by the REV. JACK AMiCK, UMCOR staff Led by United Women in Faith board member Kelly G. Loeb at the opening of the board of directors meeting, March 6, 2025.
