...carry me

"Momma...carry me." Parents the world over know that the time you are most likely to hear this refrain is when your arms are already full, home or the car is still blocks away...and you yourself are weary and staggering just to stay upright. It is the time you are probably wishing for someone to carry you. 

One of the remarkable aspects about life on this round earth seems to be that things were not created for isolation. Creatures flourish in herds, prides, flocks, litters, and packs. And people seem to flourish in community, too. In one of the creation stories from Genesis (this one from the second chapter), after assigning place and occupation to the human, isolation begins to seem pretty overwhelming. Matter of fact, it is the first pronouncement of "not good" amongst all the "goods" of creation. Company, and community, is created as the remedy for the "not good" of isolation.

In community, we hold each other up. We celebrate, and we mourn, in solidarity. We lean, and we prop up. We are strong, and we are weak, and we are not ashamed. We bear each other's burdens, and let others close enough to bear ours.

We trust each other to be the hands of God, to bear us up, when we just. can't. even. 

When we whisper, "carry me."

...hope past hope's believing

View the present through the promise, Christ will come again.
Trust despite the deepening darkness, Christ will come again.
Lift the world above its grieving through your watching and believing
in the hope past hope's believing; Christ will come again.
---Thomas Troeger, 1985

We wait and watch here, in the darkness of the 'before' time. We shake our heads at the state of this world. We whisper, we cry, we shout, we pray, "How long?" How long now till things are made right? How long till good is rewarded, and evil is punished? How long until the weak are protected from harm? Till justice rolls down like mighty waters?

Lord, how long? We wait and watch. For it to happen. For us. To us.

In this relatively new text by hymnist Thomas Troeger, our waiting and watching is no passive thing. To a world grieving starvation, disease, wanton violence, stony disregard for the suffering of others; to this world, hope comes with power to rescue. Our hoping, our believing has a presence to lift this world. Because our hope is in a transformative Christ, who grieves this world with us, who comes to set things right. To feed the hungry, to heal the sick, to break the sword.

And most of all? To fill the hearts of humanity with the desire to do the same. Could it happen? Hope past hope's believing. I believe.