Fighting For Hope

When I was a child, our living room was home to a white couch that was perfect for building forts. It was a hub for my imagination, quickly transforming as needed into a cave or a submarine so that our session of play might continue on. There is so much to be said for an object like that, one that is loved not for what it was, but for the wonderful things which it could be seen to be. And wasn’t that how we all used to see the world? Overflowing with joy, bursting at the seams with hope, tearing our covers off each and every morning in puppy love with the newness of life and how good it was. Thankful for our white couch, the voices of our parents, the refreshment of apple juice and bedtime stories about Batman for the fourth night in a row. We were unafraid of goodness, wide-eyed and trusting of what was to come in the journey.

And then life happened; friends moved away, hearts got broken, classes were failed, jobs were lost, and our ecstasy for life was drowned out in noise the early mornings and FAFSA applications.

I think that for this last season or so, fear has started to win more than it’s lost in my life. There seem to be a great many things to be afraid of these days, more reasons than ever to shrink back into comfort, routine, and safety in the known. Be it financial insecurity or finding a good career, political division turning us on one another, or the occasional threat of nuclear annihilation. In the midst of this uncertainty, I so easily fall back onto some perceived notion of control.

The problem is that I know this to be a lie, a fabrication I tell myself to ease the discomfort of not knowing what will happen next. This fear of letting go of control will progress until we have tightened our grips on our loved ones, or our jobs, or our grades until the idols they have become are too large to ignore and we worship on anyway. This weekend my pastor Mike shared a quote from Tim Keller that struck this particular vein of thought.

You and I are unavoidably and irreducibly hope-based creatures. We are controlled not how we live now, but what we think will happen later. Christian hope has to do with the ultimate future, not the immediate.

And so with this truth comes the deepest embodiment of that sinister creature fear. It is not that we may fail to achieve what we hope for, but that if hope truly is that which shepherds our lives forward, we are hoping for things that are pitifully small. We hope for money over meaning, for attention over love, and the control of our lives over yielding into beautiful submission to the ultimate future of Christ’s kingdom. We have to fight for hope in things worth our lives.

If you will allow me a confession, I would like to say that dreaming has been scary for me lately. Because if I dream and it fails, then I feel that the dream must have been stupid, or faulty, or nieve, and perhaps even that I am all of those things. So I have been telling myself dreams that are small, handheld, and easy. If my five-year-old self could now see my thoughts, could feel my heart, I think he would cry. I think he would cry at whatever unnamable frightened shadow lurks beneath my surface. At my sin and brokenness and shame.

I would like to hold that little five-year-old Quinn and tell him that it is okay, that life is good, that God is faithful, and that he is loved with more grace than he can comprehend. That he will have so much more joy that he knows, and the pain will be forgotten in the wake of the healing that will follow.

And I think we all have to speak that truth to our little five-year-old selves more often than we do. To quiet their endless questioning, and turn on the light when the darkness seems scary, and pour out grace and forgiveness when they make mistakes. And give them big squeezing hugs, and kiss their cheeks, and spin around in circles until we fall down into a pile of laughter and then do it all again.

But we also need to let our five-year-old selves speak truth to us. Play more, be vulnerable, hug your mom, take naps, get excited about the day ahead and the possibility of it going any which way it likes. To dream and hope bigger things, and to have the courage and imagination to go after them.

We have no more control over what tomorrow will bring than we do over the direction of a warm summer breeze rolling over a field of grass. But this does not mean that we do not dream, but rather, it gives us the freedom to dream as large as we would like. Why not hope for a marriage that shakes the foundation of this shallow sensual world. Or imagine a career that allows you to spread hope and joy to others without reserve.

I am still afraid. Of not being good enough, worthy enough, righteous enough, funny enough, rich enough, cultured enough, handsome enough, loved enough. But I pray that I have enough courage to still move in the right direction despite the fear. That my dreams are scandalously big, and that I would have the tenacity to follow them. But most of all, that I would have a deep hope in that ultimate future of forever in His kingdom. And maybe in some small corner of that infinite incarnation of perfection, my white couch is waiting for me to climb inside once more so that we may share a few more adventures together safe within it’s cushioned walls.