Abiding in Hope logo
For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God’s people, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. (Ephesians 1:15-20)
Do you ever think about “the hope to which he has called you?” I know we are in the season of Board of Ordained Ministry and District Committee on Ministry interviews with people who have felt called into ministry. I wonder if in the interviews, people talk about “the hope to which he has called you.” I don’t mean just all the theological knowledge that must be understood, nor the way to preach a one, two, or three-point sermon, and not even how well a candidate might teach a Bible study. I am wondering how all of us might be moved, touched, or renewed if we could listen in to hear people talk about “the hope to which he has called you.” I think it would do us all good and certainly it would give our church communities and ministries vitality if we reached down inside us and lifted this hope, of which the Apostle goes on to say: “that power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead…”. Wow. How often do we celebrate a hope, within us and among us, that comes from the same power that raised Christ from the dead? An everlasting, incorruptible power. It is ours, this power, living in the hope to which we are called.
There is so much wrong with the world – on that I think we could be agreed. Whether the sickness of racism or sexism or ableism or affluenza, or the dismantling of civil rights protections for trans people, immigrants, women, and others, we are living in a time when care for our neighbor and the notion of liberty for all seems to be at a low ebb. There are active attacks on medicine and scientific research. There is a sense that we in the U.S.A. are becoming isolated from others in the world, countries who have been our partners in Democracy and free trade. But many of those countries themselves are dealing with xenophobia and the problem of refugees arriving in their countries after being displaced by war, gang violence, famine, and global warming.
I have been in conversations with people pondering whether to leave the U.S.A. I ask, “But where would you go?” Where in all the earth can we escape the present afflictions that affect so many of our neighbors, the earth, and ourselves? And if we are the ones with enough money, privilege, and resources to move, should we be the ones moving? What happened to the “hope to which he has called you?” Two days ago, I was talking with a man I work with in Spiritual Direction, a layman with a prominent job. He said, “I am one who these new governmental policies are supposed to be for: I am rich, white, male and comfortable. And yet, in my deepest heart, I know I must work to level the playing field, to make it so people with fewer resources than me have a chance. Like I was given a chance when I was a kid and people helped me figure things out. I feel like God has placed a dream in my heart to help people. I want to learn more how to do that.” I think he was talking about “the hope to which we are called.”
I recently moved to Rock Hill, SC, just thirty minutes south of Charlotte, to be near my daughter, Rev. Laurel Capesius, who directs the Wesley Foundation for Winthrop University. Last week, on Ash Wednesday, I attended three services, one at noon at the Episcopal Church where the newly installed young (married) gay priest distributed the ashes and served us communion. He talked about remembering how fleeting life is and how it is part of our calling to repent from things that have damaged us or others.
I then went to a 5 p.m. service at the Wesley Center on the Winthrop University campus, and a young Black clergywoman talked to us about remembering the ancestors in our families and in the faith who taught us about courage and about sticking together in times of distress. That our sacrifices give rise to new life. Then my daughter Rev Laurel distributed the ashes, the ashes of our lamentations and sacrifices that lead to new life.
Finally, I went to a small House Church at 7 p.m., where we sat around a table and made watercolor cards of hope that would be attached around town to lift people up and remind them they are not alone. The pastor of the House Church (a UMC clergywoman) distributed the ashes and said that because God is faithful to us even in our small lives, we can be faithful by small acts of kindness and resistance to indifference. That even though we are dust, so the bones will live.
All of these services stirred in me “the hope to which he has called us.” What is always true within the trauma that we experience, sometimes in our individual lives and sometimes as a nation, is how resiliency begins to counter the paralyzing effects, and the urge to help, to reach out, to help heal, to restore, to live, to survive kicks in. For we are walking the way of Jesus: it is a part of “the hope to which we are called.” What we know is that what we sometimes cannot do alone, we can do together. And across your Facebook page, your Instagram, your Bluesky feeds and your text threads, I believe there is evidence of this hope, this deep inner resiliency that together we shall survive, together we shall clean up the disasters of our lives, together we shall help each other through the traumatic events that are being visited upon us. There is evidence in gatherings at the State Houses across the country and the gatherings in coffee shops and living rooms to find the strength of solidarity.
People are reaching out with a word, a prayer, a hope, a place to cry. Together, with this hope to which we are called, we walk into misery, and we walk forward believing there is more to our world than misery for we have seen that with our own eyes: the love amongst people, the beauty of the earth, the certainty of God holding us through all things.
We who have this hope understand that suffering is a big word, but it is not the last and final word. In the spaces in between live the joy of each other, the laughter of our children, the amazing discoveries of our scientists, the moving brilliance of our poets and writers, the loveliness of the day when rather than Derecho or Tornado or Hurricane or Flood or Fire there is a breeze in the grass and a sunset that is so beautiful it breaks your heart.
It is something to believe that the very energy and power that we speak of in the resurrection, the energy that it might take to lift a person from certain death, is the very power that is offered to us, is given to us, in our walk of faith. It is in this hope to which we are called.
We affirm with our lives that there is, down in each of us, a deep yearning to be truly human, to realize there is a hope that God has for each of us, that calls us to live not without fear or hurt or pain but to live with the power of resurrection energy. We are invited to grasp that hope to which we are called, which allows us a resilience and certainty that love wins. It may often be true that the voices who can speak most eloquently and with great believability about such hope are those who have been most injured by injustice. The hope to which we are called asks us to listen, to listen some more, and then, when called upon to speak, when it is our turn, to say, “I have this Hope to which I have been called, and it knits me together with all God’s children, to all God’ beloved children, and to God’s creatures on earth, and to the oceans and mountains and prairies of the earth itself, I will give my allegiance because of the great love that has come to me, the great love of the Resurrected Christ.”
Mary Bellon
The Rev. Dr. Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon
The Rev. Mary Lautzenhiser Bellon is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. This article is republished with permission from Iowa Conference's ongoing spiritual support series, "Abiding in Hope."