Hoping, Waiting, and the Necessity of Imagination.

Hope is one of the most confusing concepts I have ever encountered. Hope has carried me through darkness, giving me strength to make it through. It gives me the ability to see God when I'm surrounded by situations that are so devoid of His nature. Even if I can't see Him, it gives me an insane, illogical purpose to not lose myself because I have a hope that He is and that because He is, I will be too, one day.

On the other hand, hope has plunged me into the depths of insanity, of an unmet urgency, of burdens that I feel alone in bearing. It has led me to irrational choices. It has been the source of tears and of a gripping pain that seizes me on occasion.

Hope, by nature, is unfulfilled. Faith is the substance of what we hope for. Hope is this illusive glimmer. A spark of light you see in a dark tunnel and you're not sure if you imagined it. It is the glimpse of an image that could be an immanent reality or a mirage. Hope is always amidst an emptiness, a void. It is usually amidst uncertainty and ambiguity.

It seems to be tied regularly to waiting, which is one of the most painful places to be. Waiting, in my mind, is a position that most people don't choose to take in most situations. In a post office, in the DMV, for a future spouse, for enough money to get that car, for the right time to go to school, for the ease of summer break. Hope is tied to an unsettling disatisfaction with things in their current state and it exists by one's ability to see into or live into another reality. This necessitates a period of waiting as things change or an ability to live into the change knowing that its fulfillment will not occur, making the wait indefinite.

 Waiting without hope is passive. At an amusement park, one waits in line in the hope of riding the new roller coaster. Of course, the line could actually end up being to the restrooms, disappointing that hope. Or it could be met by its fulfillment at the end when one reaches that ride they imagined. No one waits in line with nothing at the end of the line. People wait in line with the sole purpose of eventually not being in line anymore, which is where hope comes in.

I'm realizing more and more that hope thrives on imagination. That probably makes some nervous. Imagination can be the cause of detrimental beliefs or of delusions. The danger isn't in having and using imagination. The danger is in not having an open imagination. Imaginative solutions to problems can become a problem themselves when once this imagined reality is created, that there is no ability to amend and adjust it, or that there is no openness to receive from other voices and other imaginations.

God, the most imaginative being of all, created. Because he created and gave us the ability to imagine and create, he gives us the ability, in some senses to create the worlds we live in. We can advance the kingdom of darkness or the kingdom of light. The kingdom of darkness is advanced by active participation in its purposes and in the passive acceptance and adoptions of its ways. The kingdom of light is advance by an active and a necessarily imaginative existence and interaction with the world and with God.

Romans 8:22-25
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

To wait patiently doesn't mean the waiting is inactive. To wait patiently also doesn't mean that we can't groan as we wait. We DO groan as we wait, but we wait and we hope for what is unseen. How do we do that? By imagining the Kingdom that Jesus describes, by imagining our roles in it, by imagining the fulfillment of all things, by imagining what wholeness looks like, and by actively living into it while we wait. It can be painful; it can be joyous. But hope, in the Biblical sense of a spirit-filled hope, does not disappoint (Romans 5:5).

Sometimes I like to go into nature. I feel like nature teaches me how to wait. Nature, the whole of creation, groans knowing what has been, knowing what it was meant to be. We groan, only imagining what can/could/will be. I like the certainty I feel in the groans of nature - the certainty of a wholeness that is to come. It is one of many places that fuels my hope and teaches me to wait patiently. I think it's important for us to find those places and to find places that feed imagination.

Thank God that he has enough hope for the Kingdom that he revealed himself to us in Jesus so that we could share in his hope.