Writing Hope - in hopeless times - by Liz Carter

All over the world we are waiting. Waiting with dread, with worry, with uncertainty. We’re waiting with a heavy sense of something very wrong. Creation is groaning, and we’re joining in.

As a writer, in these times I am challenged. I could write bitterness. I could write anger. I could write my own sense of vulnerability, my own story of living with a condition that would not work well with this virus. And I probably will, because we need to write the hard things, we need to write the stuff that resonates with those who struggle. But if we write the sadness, perhaps we can challenge ourselves to write hope, too. Hope lifts. Hope streams through darkness and lifts heads and hands. The hope we have in our God is a unique hope, it’s a hope that surrounds and upholds even in the hopeless days. I’d like to explore today how three writers wrote hope, and think about what we can learn from their words.

1. JRR Tolkien

In Lord of the Rings, Frodo and Samwise are asked to undertake the most difficult of tasks - getting the ring to the evil of Mordor to destroy it. In a moment of utter despair, Frodo is all ready to throw it all in. But Sam calls him to hope:

“I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.” 

Sam is doing something here that we as writers can get behind with all our might: He’s reminding Frodo of the power of story. Reminding him of what has passed, and what will pass, and of the truth that the sun will still shine. These powerful words are a call to all of us to look for the sun behind the clouds, to keep holding on even when our fingers are tired and slipping. A reminder of a hope that never, ever fails.

2. Amy Carmichael:

I am so inspired by the life of Amy Carmichael, a missionary in the late 19^th century who set up an orphanage in India for some of the discarded children (mostly girls) in society at the time. After a while she became very ill, and was consigned to her bed where she continued to write about her faith in God, despite her pain - which she called ‘fetters of iron.’ Her words speak greatly to me as someone who also suffers from chronic illness - so honest, and yet so suffused with great hope:

‘You were like a leafy bush, and many little things came for you to shelter. You were not great or important, but you could help those little things.

And it was the joy of your life to help them.

Now you can do nothing at all.

Some desolation – illness, monetary loss, or something you cannot talk about to anyone, a trouble no one seems to understand – has overwhelmed you. All your green leaves have gone.

Now you cannot shelter even the least little bird.

You are like a bush, with its bare twigs . No use to anyone.

That is what you think.

But look again at this bare bush. Look at the delicate tracery of its shadow lines on the snow. The sun is shining behind the bush and so every little twig is helping to make something that is very beautiful. Perhaps other eyes, that you do not see, are looking on it too, wondering what can be made of sun and snow and poor bare twigs….

The spring will come again, for after winter there is always spring.

……Now, in the midst of so much unhappiness, engulfing your heart in cold, let these words seep down – like figures of sunlight, like trickles of first-spring rains – to refresh your inmost soul. God will not fail you, who is the God of the sun and the snow.’

These words of hope seep into our deepest places and blow apart the lies and the negativity which can so easily take hold. Amy, like Tolkien, reminds us of the hope ahead - the hope that never fails - for after winter, there is also spring. I pray that today, for any of you reading who are feeling engulfed in winter for any reason, you may get a glimpse of glorious spring.

3. St Paul.

In Romans 8, Paul writes eloquently about future hope in a painful present:

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

These words speak clearly of something being wrong, of creation groaning as we wait for something right. It’s because of those glimpses we get of that something that we are able to hold on to hope, because we have seen in the redemptive work of Jesus that all will be made right. I don’t know about you, but these words resonate so greatly with me in a time when the world is sighing and weeping and waiting. Later in that chapter, Paul sums up his call to hope with these enticing words:

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As a Christian writer I feel called to write the hope as well as the despair. Sometimes the time will be right for the despair only, and sometimes for the hope to be added. Hope can be written in so many ways, through story, through fiction narrative, through scripture exposition, through our own lives. Today I pray that we can all catch a sense of this glorious hope that holds and enfolds us, and write it for a hopeless world.

Liz Carter is an author and blogger who likes to write about finding hope in the painful times of life. Her first book, Catching Contentment, explores what it means to find peace in a lesser life.