All that is not hope is wooden, hobbledehoy, blunt-edged, and sharp-pointed, like the word ‘Reality’. There is no freedom, but only imprisonment; no grace, but only condemnation and corruption; no divine guidance, but only fate; no God, but only a mirror of unredeemed humanity. And this is so, be there never so much progress of social reform and never so much trumpeting of the grandeur of Christian redemption! Redemption is invisible, inaccessible, and impossible, for it meets us only in hope. Do we desire something better than hope? Do we wish to be something more than men who hope? But to wait is the most profound truth of our normal, everyday life and work, quite apart from being Christians. Every agricultural labourer, every mother, every truly active or truly suffering man knows the necessity of waiting. And we — we must wait, as though there were something lying beyond good and evil, joy and sorrow, life and death; as though in happiness and disappointment, in growth and decay, in the ‘Yes’ and in the ‘No’ of our life in the world, we were expecting something. We must wait, as though there were a God whom, in victory and in defeat, in life and in death, we must serve with love and devotion. ‘As though?’ Yes, this is the strange element in the situation. In our journey through time, we are still men who wait, as though we saw what we do not see, as though we were gazing upon the unseen. Hope is the solution of the riddle of our ‘As though’.

Posted on January 12, 2010