One Word
This winter on The Daily Pattern we’re in a series called One Word. Each day we take one word – a feeling or circumstance – and bring a word from God to it. Let the Word of God speak to your life.
Invocation
Make the sign of the cross, and say,
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Invitation Prayer
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matt. 5:5) O Lord, I am lowly and humble. You alone are my inheritance. Amen.
Word: Romans 5:3-5
…“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Meditation
Hope by Julianna Shults
Poet Emily Dickinson famously wrote, “’Hope’ is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul.” Her beautiful poem gives us a vision of hope as a bird that keeps us warm in the storm and never asks for anything in return. I appreciate Dickinson’s gorgeous metaphor, but I’ve always felt this vision of hope lacks something. Then a few weeks ago I read Caitlin Seida’s poem entitled “Hope is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat,” and it resonated deeply with me. I will warn that it has some adult language and imagery, but in part Seida calls Hope “an ugly thing / With teeth and claws and / Patchy fur…. It’s what thrives in the discards / and survives in the ugliest parts of our world, / Able to find a way to go on, / When nothing else can even find a way in.”
In a time when everything in our world seems broken, I want hope like a sewer rat. Hope that can survive and thrive in the worst of times. Hope that has seen difficulty, scarcity, pain, and fear and has continued to scrap its way through. Hope that holds without resources when there seems to be nothing else to hold to.
Romans 5:3-5 says, “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” Hope in Jesus, hope in the resurrection, hope that God will make all things right in the end isn’t something flighty or weak. This hope is the result of suffering endured and character formed through sin, forgiveness, and struggle.
God gave Adam and Eve hope as they faced consequences to sin. God’s hope carried Israelites through slavery, wandering, and thriving in the promised land. This hope lasted through hundreds of years of silence before the birth of Jesus. It came incarnate a small baby in Bethlehem. Jesus brought hope to the least to all, even the margins, in his ministry and then was sacrificed on a cross for us.
Through Jesus, we have hope that is not fragile or fleeting but deep, abiding; hope that the darkness has not overcome. Our hope is in redemption through Jesus and reconciliation with God.
May God’s hope, whether bird or sewer rat, empower and live within you as you will walk through in this sometimes ugly world.
Amen.
Prayer for Family
· For my immediate family (parents, spouse, siblings).
· For extended family (cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents)
· For close friends that are as family to me.
· For those who don’t have families, or whose families are broken.
· For forgiveness and reconciliation where there is division in my family.
· For provision where there is need in my family.
· For God to be the foundation, and the cross the center of my family.
· For a generation yet unborn, future members of our family.
Closing Prayer
O Lord and King, your Kingdom comes even without our prayer. But we pray that it would also come among us. We are desperate for your reign and rule, for all we see is rebellion. Come into my heart, my home, my family, my work, my church, my community. Rule with justice and with mercy. Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.