A Spiritual Word: Hope

“We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” Romans 5:3b-5

A new year screams hope-especially the year 2010 in South Africa when Africa will host the FIFA World Cup for the first time. Furthermore, my two youngest sisters and my young neighbor/cousin/almost brother wanted to do something and intensely focused on the task of contributing to this newsletter as my “South African Friends” (see page 2), reinforcing the theme of hope, as they are the future. When I read the first few verses of Romans 5, this Biblical passage about hope seemed to be speaking about black South Africans.
Imagine that you are persecuted your whole life because of a trait you did not choose and cannot change. You stand in a different line at the post office based on this trait. People that have a society-deemed-better uncontrollable trait ask you to fetch them things because you have a different, uncontrollable trait. You cannot leave your home after certain hours or go in specific areas of town. Black South Africans, the vast majority of South African’s population, lived this reality for decades under apartheid.
As I mentally prepared for living in South Africa, I prepared myself to receive bitterness based on my skin color. In some ways, I thought the bitterness justified shown towards the oppressors by the unjustly oppressed. Yet, since I’ve arrived in South Africa, no one has shown me bitterness. In my small community, people initially stare at me as a celebrity, humbly divert their eyes to the ground or measure me with their eyes, but I never feel demonized. In drastic contrast, people have surprised me over and over with their kind eyes and genuine smiles when I greet them. When I asked Dean Myaka why I received no bitterness or anger, he calmly responded, “It’s not in our nature; you can’t just ill-treat people out of the blue.” His intuitively clear and simple answer left me speechless. If anything is left from the apartheid that I sense in interactions I share with others, it is a sense of doubt about whether we may greet one another as fellow humans, as if others are unworthy of my acknowledgment. How do people come to a point when they question their self-worth? I am in awe of and humbled by my South African brothers and sisters.
Martin Luther King Jr. articulates a rationale for treating oppressing people with love in his collection of sermons called, Strength to Love. In the 1960s, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the power of love to overcome racial injustice: “There will be no permanent solution to the race problem until oppressed men develop the capacity to love their enemies. The darkness of racial injustice will be dispelled only by the light of forgiving love” (55). Hope cannot be found in continuing the cycle of injustice, but breaking the cycle with love. Furthermore, he shares that, although centuries of unjust oppression could lead people to feel bitter and act correspondingly with hate, hate is never the answer. Dr. King states that if people act hatefully in retaliation: “…the new order we seek will be little more than a duplicate of the old order. We must in strength and humility meet hate with love” (55). Even after years of suffering, Dr. Kind declares that love is the only solution to hateful actions.
In Romans, Paul writes from a prison cell of how suffering leads to hope. Although people do not often look to add suffering in their lives, I feel the strength of the people all around me in South Africa. Yesterday, I greeted an older woman as I passed her on my way home. She was carrying a very heavy parcel on her head (talk about neck strength), and I asked if she was okay. Instead of giving me some of her burden, she started asking about me: my name, my last name, where I am from, what I am doing in South Africa, etc. In return, I asked where she was going and asked her name: Ivy. I turned to go, and she called after me, “You didn’t ask my last name!” Taken slightly aback-family affiliations are much more important in my community in South Africa than my community in the US- I smiled and asked her last name. After responding with a smile, she called after me something along the lines of: “I wish I could spend lots of time with you so I could learn English.” I called back: “And I could learn isiZulu!” As I walked away, I felt humbled by this woman; Ivy had been oppressed by a system run by white people for the majority of her life. Yet, in our conversation, mostly in English, she told me that she wishes she could learn from me. Talk about character! She demonstrated Paul’s abstract argument. Her skin spoke to her suffering, her heavy parcel and even steps demonstrated her endurance, her conversation proved her character, and her eyes and spirit shone with hope. The people of South Africa ceaselessly teach me about deep, spiritual hope.
At times this year, I have felt a loss of hope. Yet, these are the times when I am depending on my own understanding. Of course I should loose hope in my understanding, for my understanding is limited. Hoping solely based on my own understanding is not a deep, spiritual hope worthy of my efforts. Deep, spiritual hope is based on something larger than myself: God’s power and grace are unlimited. God gave us the ultimate reason to hope when he died on the cross to give us new life. As our creator, God lives in each of us. You will find God, and therefore a reason to hope, in every person’s face. Perhaps people’s faces do not always read love; maybe the faces seem overtaken by hate. Yet, God has still created each of us. Furthermore, when God gave us freewill, he gave us the capacity to choose love over hate. We may choose to show love, thereby sharing God, leading to hope. In love, God reveals hope.

God, Guide us to see blessings of hope every day. Amen.