Living into the hope Christ offers

The movie Hope Floats is one of my all time favorites. I like Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick, Jr. and Gena Rowlands, but it's the relationships that struck a chord with me, and maybe that it took place in the South. There was so much of it that I could identify with. It came out in 1998, a year after my divorce, and while in some ways my situation was exactly the reverse, it was very close in the relationship area. Like Birdee in the movie, almost a year after my divorce I moved to Texas too. But instead of moving back to my roots, I was moving away from them. I left the small town in Alabama where I had lived my entire life to move to the Metroplex. And though my girls were older they still struggled with the way their lives were uprooted and were not happy with my decision. The hardest part, and the part that still stings the most, is that like Birdee, I lost my parents. They both passed away within 2 1/2 yrs after I moved away from them.

There are several good quotes in the movie, and the best, the one that gives it its name, is at the end:  

"Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome. That's what momma always says. She says that beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. Try to remember that when you find yourself at a new beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up. And it will, too..."

I like that quote, but you know, hope doesn't just get you through the new beginnings. Hope gets you through the endings (maybe especially the endings) and through the middle too.

My Pastor has a reference he likes to use, and anyone who is familiar with his blog and/or his sermons will recognize it. He talks about "living into" something: living into the Gospel or living into the question. And lately he has been referring to the Father happening: the Father happens to the son, the Father happens to you and me. I like the way Pastor uses words, taking them out of their normal context and grammatical pattern, he makes something we've heard a million times come alive because we have to look at it from an unfamiliar angle. Maybe that's why I changed up my blog. I needed to look at it differently to bring me back to where I began. To remind me of what I set out to do when I started this project.

I know that's why I moved to Texas. I needed a new beginning, a new perspective. My life was so changed from what it had been for almost twenty years of marriage. I was changed in a way that was new and strange to me. I had been through big changes before. At 17 I became a wife, at 18 I became a mother, at 28 I miscarried and almost died, at 29 I registered for college classes on a whim with no idea of how I would find the time or the funds to make it, and at 34 I went to work full time for the first time in my life. I was ill-prepared for every one of these changes in my life, but I learned, I changed, I adapted and I survived. But at 36 I finally accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior (no fanfare but a very personal encounter), and that was a huge change. I can look back now and see how God was preparing me for the harder changes still ahead of me. He had patiently stood by all my life as I kept him at arms distance. I was in control and I could do it all. Even then he was surrounding me with his saints to love me and pray for me until the day I couldn't hold him away anymore. So when I finally crumbled at the foot of his cross he whispered, "Let go and let Me. Let Me be your strength, your faith, your courage, your life. You don't have to be in control if you just let Me."  So I did. Christ prepared me by teaching me to let go.

Do you know what it takes for a control freak to let go? The absence of hope. You know that saying, "When you reach the end of your rope, just tie a knot in it and hang on?" Well what about when you run out of rope? What about if you have no more strength to hang on? What if, with every fiber of your being, you just want to let go of that rope? That is the point where Christ steps in. He gently replaces the fraying rope in our cramped, calloused hands with the tenderest hope, offered to us in his precious, open, nail-scarred hands.

I think that is what Pastor means when he says to live into our faith. When we can't grasp forgiveness, when we can't quite make sense of it but we know it's important--even vital--to our survival, we have to find a way to just accept it. We can't answer the question, but we can accept not knowing because we trust in the hope Christ brings us. We can't fathom the grace that comes to us in the Gospel, but we trust in that grace and accept it with humble and grateful hearts. Christ died to bring us life. But when your feet have been swept out from under you and you don't know where to turn next, a big new life may be too much to grasp. But hope, that tender, grace-filled hope is something we can accept. The hope of finding solid ground beneath us again. The hope of a new direction, a new beginning, a new life to come. And a Savior who whispers, "Just let go and let Me."

Thank you most precious Lamb of God for your tender and grace-filled hope. For your loving hands that lift us up and your soft, gentle voice calling to us to come home. Help us to live into your grace, letting the Father happen to us again and again, until we can fully live into that bright new life eternal through Christ.  Amen.