Romans 4: 13-25 (links validated 2/7/24)

In his book, King, Jonathan Eig recounts how the authorities responded to civil rights protesters’ march across Selma, Alabama’s Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. He quotes marcher John Lewis as remembering how the police “came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses, releasing the tear gas … I was hit in the head [and] my legs … I thought was going to die.” Onlookers largely kept silent in the face of such injustice. Eig describes the reaction of a Selma attorney who witnessed what we now call “Bloody Sunday.” Philip Pitts sat in a sheriff’s car and watched as peaceful protesters met unprovoked violence. He watched marchers flee and posse members spur their horses to chase them. Pitts also heard white spectators cheer from the side of the road and, in some cases even join in. Pitts later admitted that “I knew it was wrong … [But] I didn’t even tell my [Selma City Attorney] daddy I knew it was wrong. It was really inhuman … Somebody should have stopped it. But who was going to stop it? Sometimes I regret not voicing my objections, but … they wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.”

In “Hope Is More Than Happiness,” in Children’s Books, Katherine Patterson writes, Christians “are not optimists as the common definition goes, because we, like Moses, must be realistic about the world in which we find ourselves. And this world looked at squarely does not allow optimism to flourish. Hope for us cannot simply be wishful thinking, nor can it only be only the desire to grow up and take control over our own lives. “Hope is a yearning, rooted in reality, that pulls us toward the radical biblical vision of a world where truth and justice and peace do prevail, a time in which the knowledge of God will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, a scene which finds humanity living in harmony with nature, all nations beating their swords into plowshares and walking together by the light of God’s glory. Now there’s a happy ending for you. The only purely happy ending I know.”

In her famous Diary of Anne Frank, the young woman writes this about her diary: “I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for giving me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me!” From so many angles, that, as a colleague loves to say, will preach.

The 2018 Netflix film Private Life deals beautifully, realistically, and painfully with the issue of infertility. Rachel and Richard (played masterfully by Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti) are a middle-aged married couple from New York who have tried everything they can to have a child, with nothing but failure in return. Their years of barrenness have turned their moments of love and physical connection into times of tension, frayed nerves, and bitter disappointment. A failed attempt at invitro-fertilization cost them all of their savings and still left them without a child. Even the hope of adoption left them devastated when the young birth mother, with whom they had developed an adoptive agreement, decided to keep her baby rather than follow through on her promise. The majority of the film centers on their relationship with their direction-less twenty-something niece Sadie, who wanders into their life and volunteers to be the surrogate through whom their hopes can be realized. However, in the end, like Hagar in relationship to Abraham and Sarah, this too fails to fulfill what was promised. Private Life is beautiful but painful to watch. Rachel and Richard’s private agony is almost too much to observe, let alone endure. Nevertheless, the film ends with the couple sitting in a diner, holding hands, and waiting for another expectant young woman, hoping that she might show up and fulfill their dreams of parenthood. Rachel and Richard sit together in the diner as deeply wounded prisoners of hope. The epistle text before us is also rooted in such undying hope and unwavering faith...

When the Nazis invaded Holland, Corrie Ten Boom and her family hid Jews in their home. A turncoat betrayed them. Corrie and her sister, Betsie, were sent to Ravensbruck, a Nazi death camp. In Ravensbruck, Betsie awakened Corrie one night. Corrie pulled a coat over their heads so the guards would not hear them. Then Betsie whispered in a voice that was near death: "God showed me that after the war we must give to the Germans that which they now try to take away from us: our love for Jesus." Corrie was appalled. She said: "Oh, Betsie, you mean that if we live we will have to return to Germany?" Betsie said that, in her vision, God gave them a concentration camp—a death camp—which they would use to rebuild lives. Then they would travel the whole world, telling people about Jesus. Corrie protested: "To all the world? But that will take much money." Betsie responded: "Yes, but God will provide.… After all, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills. If we need money we will just ask the Father to sell a few cows." Can you imagine such a grand vision in such a grim place? It seemed fantastic. Three days later, Betsie died. The impossible dream was over. But Corrie survived Ravensbruck...

“The place to start is with a woman laughing. She is an old woman and, after a lifetime in the desert, her face is cracked and rutted like a six-month drought . . . She is laughing because she is pushing ninety-one hard and has just been told she is going to have a baby. Even though it was an angel who told her, she can’t control herself, and her husband can’t control himself, either. He keeps a straight face a few seconds longer than she does, but he ends by cracking up, too. Even the angel is not unaffected. He hides his mouth behind his golden scapular, but you can still see his eyes...

It reminds me of a daughter who was recounting her sixty-nine year old mother’s life. Her mother had lived through the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It had left its mark on her. She was never extravagant with her spending. What had occasioned this recounting was the fact that the mother was now in the hospital diagnosed with cancer and given very little hope of survival. The daughter feared the moment when she would have to tell her mother that she was dying. In her struggles the daughter thought to herself, “Should I tell my mother? Did she already know? If not, did she suspect? Could I give her any hope?” Her mother’s birthday was approaching. She gave her a new especially nice nightgown. Her mother looked at the nightgown for the longest time. “Would you mind returning it to the store?” her mother asked, “I don’t really want it.” The daughter was surprised, but asked her what she would like for her birthday. Her mother pointed to an advertisement for some very expensive designer summer purses...

(see especially Eye of God)

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