“Return to your fortress, prisoners of hope.”
Zechariah 9:12
It’s the first week of spring and everything on the farm glistens with the assurance of forthcoming abundance. The grass is lush and in need of a trim, the fruit trees are shedding their blossoms to reveal clusters of new fruit, while the fall planted flower crops adorn the garden with speckles of purple, pink, orange, and blue. The morning air still bites a bit, though my workshop provides a cozy retreat among stacks of grow lights and heat mats, where trays of tiny seedlings prepare to join in the landscape’s steady procession towards summer.
My workbench is cluttered with sketches of rows, pruning plans, and lists of which seeds to start and when. There is a bucket of freshly mixed soil at my feet, a box of dahlia tubers to my right, and a few piles of seed packets lay clipped before me. It’s a scene bathed in familiarity, marked by a certain level of clarity on what to do and when, and yet still there is something about all of it that remains shaky and a bit obscure. That same expectancy that draws everything forward with such determination and strength, is simultaneously tempered by the knowledge that it could all be lost somewhere in-between where we are going and where we have been.
For me, on this particular plot of ground, I plant and prune and grow and build, knowing that there is always a chance of this place being destroyed by a flood once again. I also know that a record-breaking late freeze might take out our fruit crops, again. I know that last year’s unprecedented heat and drought might return. And I guess it’s because I have seen so many impossible things become possible right before my eyes, that I now live with the awareness that one more impossible possibility could always be looming up ahead. Some new loss. On more tragedy. Another setback to the forward progress of this little patch of land and the one who tends to it.
And maybe you can relate to this in your own unique way as well. Maybe your hope for the future is overshadowed by the fear of losing something or someone that you love. Maybe you are afraid of losing your job, your control, your health, your wealth, or even your spouse. Maybe this world feels like a shaky place to raise a kid, to plant a garden, or to build something new. Maybe you are afraid of losing ground, or being rejected, or investing yourself and your resources in something that might fail.
Maybe there is a seed of some hope or dream within you, a longing to cultivate something beautiful within or around you, and maybe you can feel it, beckoning you onward and into a steady progression towards some vision of future abundance.
And where are you today with that hope or that dream? Are you planting and pruning and growing and tending on behalf of it? Or are you struggling to move forward because the growing conditions of this world just seem a bit too harsh?
Students at Oxford University were fraught by this same tension in the fall of 1939, as the threat of the Second World War loomed before them. And many were beginning to think that it wasn’t worth it to pursue an education anymore. Because why expend your resources cultivating knowledge and building a future when bombs were about to start falling overhead? Perhaps it would be better to put their education on hold until things had gone back to normal, because normal was a much more suitable condition for growth.
It was in response to this that C.S. Lewis made this stunning proclamation in a sermon at Oxford in September of that year, he said,
“The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself… We are mistaken when we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been normal.”
The war hadn’t changed the world, it had just exposed what was already true. Which is that this life is vulnerable. We are vulnerable. The growing conditions on earth are harsh. The garden is divided, as we discussed a few weeks back. The lion does not lie down with the lamb, at least not yet. Things are not as they should be. Evil does exist. Bombs of all sorts will fall from time to time. Disease will spread. We are bound to let ourselves, and each other down every once in a while. Fires, floods, hurricanes, and droughts do pose a threat. Our bodies are susceptible to decay. Creation is in distress. And sometimes it will feel as if we have lost much more here than we will ever gain.
But even in the midst of this, there is a procession underway. A movement that is leading all of creation towards future abundance. In this world of death and loss, there is a Way that leads to life. And according to The Way that was embodied, perfected, and made available by Jesus, hope is not found by denying, deflecting, detouring, or distracting ourselves from the harsh and inhospitable conditions that still mar and mark life on this planet, but instead, it’s what we receive, and also what we cultivate with and around ourselves, when we see the world exactly as it is, and still choose to show up, anyway.
And we can see this outlined in Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem. He knew that there was a bounty on his head. And yet still he showed up, in pursuit of faithfulness to his call, on a procession that led him through the shadows of rejection, false accusations, humiliation, abandonment, pain, perceived failure, loss of the momentum of his earthly ministry, and ultimately death.
On Palm Sunday, and always, we are called to remember that our professions of faith in Jesus are meant to lead us into lives of procession alongside him. Not standing still or seeking shelter or solace from something or someone else. But lives that are moving, building, growing, and cultivating in pursuit of this future hope. This world is in such desperate need of co-missioned, co-laborers, and co-creators who are willing to accept the risks associated with faithfully tending their unique call within God’s Kingdom. And the conditions are harsh, and we are vulnerable, but we are also deeply loved. May that Love us through the shadows of our fears and doubts, in pursuit of the life that is really life, knowing that it is ultimately what awaits us on the other side of paths that are overshadowed by threats of failure, loss, and death.
Good read Karen 😘
This is beautiful