How do we all have hope in a time of uncertainty?

There is much that is uncertain, the waiting that we experienced in Advent still continues and now we wait for vaccines, for restrictions to be lifted, to be able to meet up again. Life is hard for so many, in so many different ways, whether you are a parent trying to juggle home schooling, work and family life; a nurse who has just finished a 12 hour shift and witnessed suffering and death; or someone with an elderly parent or loved one far away; we all have different aches inside of us.

This is reality, no trite words or unreality help, for once you become real you cannot become unreal again.

What shall we as Christians say amidst such difficulty and troubling times?

How can we find hope and encouragement?

The diverse voices of news and social media are loud and contradictory and confusion abounds. We are consumed by hearing anyone and everyone’s opinion of what to do and how to think in the Covid-19 crisis.

And yet the Psalmist says in Psalm 62 v 5 ‘For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him’. Silence is undoubtedly a forgotten practice in an all-consuming world. For many of us, silence is merely the act of not speaking; but the Desert Fathers and Mothers, indicated silence was about listening to God.

In our prayers, are we speaking more or listening more?

The Psalmist indicates hope and rest! The word hope means in this verse a ‘cord or rope.’ So as we listen to God, we find he is throwing us a ‘rope’ of hope, to pull us into the future. If we embrace slowing down and stepping into silence with God, we will grow in our confidence of tomorrow’s reality and take hold of the hope that God offers us all.

In doing that we don’t only find hope, we find God, the source of all our hope……