Sometimes we feel let down. ‘We had hoped that he would be the one to set Israel free’ (Luke 24:21) but we have given up on him. We had hoped that our new leader in 1980 would set us free, but we have given up on him too.
We have a habit of hoping in people and things outside of us. We transfer to them the hard work of transforming our society and our individual lives. True, if they are leaders they are in a position to influence events. But they cannot do our work for us. We have to hope in ourselves too. Role models and heroes are useful, but there comes a time when we have to grow out of them and seek the hero within. The media bombards us with images of good, bad and beautiful people. But all three are within if I care to look.
“Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new! For behold you were within me, and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my ugliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me but I was not with you.” (St Augustine)
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a long poem about the wreck of a ship that foundered in a storm and he saw the event as a capsule of human endeavour and disaster. He ends his poem with these words of hope:
“Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness of us, be a crimson-cresseted east.”
Let him easter in us! It is a cry of longing that we may come to our senses (Luke 15:17) and recognise that we have a power within. Each of us has his or her beauty and gifts. But often they lie unused like an old tool in a garden shed.
This Easter could we not look again and see our beauty and our gifts? Could we not release them from the linen cloths (John 20:5) that bind us in a premature death? We still have time to live. May he easter in us!
Post published in: Faith