At the end of an email too personal for “Sincerely,” my replier closed it with “In grief and hope,”. That valediction summed his message exactly and I’ve since noticed other occasions in life for both grief and hope.
I’d like to say it is a pairing for all people: We hope for a better future because of our grief over the past. But some may hope for a better future for the sake of progress rather than to amend the sadness of yesterday. I see the two as a paradox realized in the Christian worldview.
There are many paradoxes in Christianity: the mystery of the Trinity, that God is three in one; that we must surrender our life in order to gain life (Matthew 16:24-26); that we continue to sin after we are saved out of our sin nature (Romans 7:15-25); our worth in God’s eyes in spite of our unworthiness (Romans 5:6-8); that the Creator of the universe would deign to come to earth and as a helpless infant.
Author of Surprised by Paradox, Jen Pollock Michel writes that these and other paradoxes “offer two invitations: curiosity and humility.” When we encounter them in the Bible or in life, we wonder how opposites can both be true, and we submit to the infinitude of God’s logic.
Opposites grief and hope are foundational to the Christian life: We grieve the brokenness of the present world—its sins, diseases, disappointments, limitations, hurts, and dangers—as we hope for a world without death, suffering, sorrow, or pain (Revelation 21:4). Our hope is not a wish upon a star but a confidence in what we know is coming (Hebrews 11:1).
To carry the paradox of grief and hope is to know that things are not as they should be.
Friendships of a shared faith should weather disagreement better than friendships of shared interests—but still they fracture.
Marriages should last ‘til death because that is their design—but they sometimes end sooner.
Perfectly healthy infants and newly conceived babies have no reason to contract diseases or die—but they do.
Yet the grieving and hopeful Christian does not drown in these overwhelming situations. We flounder for a time, which is right. It would be apathetic to pretend these grievances do not affect us. What keeps us above water, though, is our hope from the Comforter present with us now (John 14:16), and our hope in what comes in the next life. This hope is an anchor for our soul (Hebrews 6:19).
I have seen a couple who lost a baby before they could know its gender comfort themselves with the hope of the provision of God. I have known of a woman ravished, who wrote in the days and weeks after her attack of her hope in the goodness of God. I have observed another woman, abandoned by her husband, hope in the faithfulness of God.
All that they told themselves in the earliest moments were not platitudes—they were deeply true. They said these things as they entered their grief, I believe. I don’t believe it was to shield themselves from these great sorrows. Rather, what they said was prescient. For I know that what the couple declared in the beginning of grief was the same as what they concluded as they entered into hope. They came to know the truths more truly.
The paradox of grief and hope is that we grieve the present because of the hope that things are not as they will be.
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