Hope Sustains

Last week, I read "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" by Heather Morris. It’s a beautifully woven story about love, compassion, and resilience. Lale, the tattooist, is a Jewish man imprisoned in Auschwitz during the Holocaust and forced to tattoo numbers on his fellow prisoners. He has an incredible will to survive. As he struggles, he also does whatever he can for others, that they, too, might survive.

There is a lot of horror and death in the book, as one would imagine, given its setting. And yet, hope leaps off the pages. Lale never gives up. He maintains his hope of leaving there alive and of having a future with a woman he meets in the camp. This reminded me of something Victor Frankel said in his book, "Man's Search for Meaning", regarding his experience in the Holocaust. I don’t remember the quote exactly, but he said something about how those who lost their hope in the camp were more certain to die. Hope was what sustained the prisoners. Hope kept them alive, even when they felt like giving up.

This week, we heard about the release of the 252 Venezuelans Trump sent to the El Salvador torture prison. They were told the only way they would leave CECOT would be in a coffin, and yet, largely in part of the ongoing advocacy and calls for justice from both the people of the U.S. and Venezuela, after four months of incarceration, they are now free. As we are hearing their stories of violent beatings, sexual abuse, mental abuse, and starvation, we are also hearing about how they never gave up. They supported each other, and they kept their hope.

Hope sustains.

Even when it seems like everything around us is against us, we must not lose sight of hope.

When I teach people about trauma and how it changes our brains, bodies, and behaviors, I warn them at the beginning: it’s going to sound pretty doom and gloom at first, but I wouldn’t do the work I do if I didn’t believe there was hope. If I hadn't seen hope and healing and resilience happen in individuals and families. I believe all things are possible. I never give up hope. I ask the participants in my workshops to keep that word of "hope" in the back of their minds as we move forward.

This is solid advice for us in the current turbulent times we live in. In trials and tribulations, keep the word hope in the back of your mind. It’s not over yet. There is always hope because we serve a God who is bigger and greater than anything that we face. We serve a God who wins in the end. All things are possible.

Holding onto hope helps us to also hold on to our compassion. Like Lale in the story. He was able to maintain his compassion for others, helping them to survive even when it put his own life at risk.

Doesn't the Bible say, there is no greater love than this, than he who lays his life down for a friend?

If we lose our compassion, we become the very thing against which we stand. What good is it if a man gains the whole world, but loses his soul? 

Hope is found in acts of compassion.

Hope is found in the glimmers, in joy, and in beauty.

Hope is found in our love for one another.

Hope is found in caring for the poor and the vulnerable.

Hope is found in peaceful - not to be mistaken with passive - resistance.

Hope is found in the sunrise every morning, marking a new beginning. 

Don’t let our current trials and tribulations steal your hope, or your compassion.

Don’t let the negative headlines turn you into the thing you protest against.

We have to be better. 

We are grace-bearers. Love-givers. Peace-makers. 

By the grace of God and the Holy Spirit within us, we can be better.

Lean on God every day.

Lean on each other every day.

Hold onto hope wherever you can find it.

Hope will sustain us.

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