Don't Hope On This Side of the Grave

Today, the day of the winter solstice, marks the longest and darkest day of the year. The weather over much of New England is a proper companion to this dark day as it is raining and windy with gusts from 30 – 40 mph. There is also this darkness that’s been cast by the recent violence in a school in Newton, Ct. Many are mourning, in prayer and contemplation as they look and hope for the light that will shine on a new day.

Many unfortunately do not let or take time to mourn and immediately start casting blame. Some even wonder where God is in all of this as if God abandoned them. They forget what many others have already pointed out that for years we have pushed God out of everything. We have not learned the lesson that some of the saddest words of earth have been and still are, “We don’t have room for you.” These are the words that the baby Jesus was welcomed on earth with. Why haven’t we learned as even while hanging on a cross He heard, “We don’t have room for you in our world.”

That never stops Jesus as he tries to brighten each of our days knocking, going from heart to heart asking if he may enter – yet many still refuse to make room for him.

Oh, we can take the NRA’s suggestion and put an armed policeman in each of our schools, and yes that may even help but unless we let Jesus in, I’m afraid our hopes for a brighter day are being misplaced.

 

History says, Don't hope
on this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
the longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme.

 

So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells.

 

Call the miracle self-healing:
The utter self-revealing
double-take of feeling.
If there's fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

 

That means someone is hearing
the outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

 

~ Seamus Heaney ~