How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?
Psalm 13:1-2

It’s been a hard week.
Really hard.
So when I sat down to write this uplift I wasn’t too surprised when the verse that popped into my head was the first verse of Psalm 13.  
“How long O Lord?”
I’ve been asking this question a lot.
How long?
How much more are we supposed to take?
In the news.
In politics.
On the streets.
In our own communities and homes.
Everything just feels so messed up.
So broken.
How long until we get put back together?
I even looked up the Hebrew for “how long” and it’s עַד אָן
Ad-an.
How long.
It literally means how much longer.
Up until what point?
And as I’m reading I’m practically yelling YES.
How much more?
Until what point are we supposed to be dealing with this brokenness and bad news and sadness and illness and grief?
How long, O Lord?

It’s easy to sink into despair.
Really easy.
As I’ve been reading this psalm this week I feel like the writer really knew loss and grief and frustration.
This guy got it.
Yet the writer of this psalm doesn’t stay in despair.  
Yes, he goes there. As we all do.
And then Verse 5 begins with those three little letters that mean so much:  But.
But.

“But I trust in your steadfast love, my heart shall rejoice in your salvation”

But, he says, I’m trusting in God.
Even in the midst of all of this crap.
Even though I feel like the world is falling apart all around me.
I trust God.
Another way that word trust can be translated is hope.
I put my hope in God.
Because God is steadfast, unwavering, resolute.
And I know that this is not the end.
That darkness and sadness and brokenness will not win.
And for that my heart rejoices.
Even when it’s sad.
Even when things seem irreparable.
My heart has hope and can and does rejoice.
Boy do I need that reminder.
This week yes, but every week.
God is steadfast and will save us.
God redeems and renews and makes us whole again.

So here we are uplifters.
Standing together, trusting and hoping.

On Sunday morning, I heard author Parker Palmer read a poem by Victoria Safford, called, “The Gates of Hope” and it has been in my mind ever since. So here it is –  

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—
Not the prudent gates of Optimism, Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
     Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
     (People cannot hear us there; they cannot pass through)
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of “Everything is gonna’ be alright.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,
The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.

And we stand there, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.

 

Today, even in the worst of times,
let us plant ourselves at the gates of hope, and do not fall to despair.  
God wins.
Love wins.

So we hope.