Hope Amidst Peeling Paint

Friends came over for dinner the other night. They hadn't been to our new house yet. When they knocked on the door, the wife said she hadn't bothered to check the house number with the address we gave them. She knew it was our house when she saw the "hope" sign in the window.

She probably also knew it was ours when she saw the stucco coming off, the peeling paint, and the tape that held the doorknob together shining in the glow of the bare lightbulb. Even with a filter, the picture looks bleak.

But in the mornings, the sun pours through the window and displays "Hope" in mirror image across the dinning room wall. And throughout the day, it slowly moves across the room until the shadow reconnects to the wooden letters.

* * *

Moving back to Denver this fall was hard. Though we'd only been gone two months, we returned to a new house in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Dear friends had moved away. I didn't expect it to feel like a major transition, and maybe that's why it was difficult.

It was also November, and when the light fades early in the day, giving way to long, cold nights, I often find myself feeling melancholy. Pregnancy hormones certainly don't help the situation. Neither does watching the news. Death and loss seems to linger in the air.

For several weeks, I fought the gloominess. I made evening plans to distract from the darkness and went outside at every sunny opportunity.

But I kept feeling a gentle nudge hinting that maybe I should accept the sadness. Grieve the loss of our friends. Allow myself to feel lonely in this new, strange house. Stop fighting the feeling that I wasn't settled. Cry about the loss and hurt in the world. (And maybe a little about the holes in our walls.)

* * *

On the first Sunday of Advent, our pastor gave a sermon about hope. He said that advent is a time to grieve and mourn all the horrible things happening in our world. It's okay to recognize and accept that all is not right on this earth. It's okay to be sad.

I was relieved to realize my cheerlessness was actually a deep, spiritual awareness of the advent season.

Or at least I could package it that way.

But the sermon didn't end there. Thankfully our pastor didn't leave us with, "Have a great week guys. Go out, and be sad. Grieve, mourn, and wail." Because as the grief moves through us, it should move in us as well. As we accept the sadness and loss and unfairness in our world, we long for a place where things are good, and true, and fair. We long for God's redemption of our world. We ache for him to come and make things right.

And that's exactly what He did when His son was born on Christmas (or in September, or whenever Jesus' birth really occurred.) He came to offer us new life. To bring hope to a weary world.

And yet, we are still weary. Because though Jesus came and offered everlasting life, he didn't yet redeem the world. He's saving that for next time. And just as the Israelites waited during their long advent for the Messiah, we now wait for Him to return. But we wait in hope.

Jordan found two blocks of wood beginning to rot in the backyard. He cut, sanded, and cleaned them. Then he installed them in our kitchen as high countertops. A friend recently asked if they were expensive.

We love flipping houses because at its core it's about redemption. About restoring something previously unusable. Rebuilding the ruins. As human beings, we were made for stories of restoration. The hope of redemption courses through our veins like a lifeline. It's in our marrow.

Our house is a reminder that all is not right in the world. There is grief and peeling paint. There is darkness and crumbling bricks. It's okay to be sad about that. But there is also a shadow of hope, moving through our home, even as the light fades. It proclaims that redemption is near. 

"They'll rebuild the old ruins,

raise a new city out of the wreckage.

They'll start over on the ruined cities,

take the rubble left behind and make it new."

Isaiah 61:4