Today, a daughter left home.  Our college student who has boarded with us the last three and one-half years finally graduated.  Stacey is the daughter of a good friend and moved into our house as a scared college sophomore, forced by circumstances to live with strangers.  Today, she departed a confident women and a loved member of our family.  With possessions crammed into a small car, she left Terry and I for her new job in St. Louis clutching the house key she had tried to return-all our children have a key to our home.

After Stacey left, I drew the short straw and had to walk the dog.  The winter rain stung my face, the icy pellets were carried on a cold gust and bore little resemblance to the gentle rain of spring.  If the temperature were to drop another degree, the rain coming from the steel-gray sky  would become shear ice.  As Mr. Jordan, my daughter’s little dog, took his sweet time finding precisely the right smell and  spot to accomplish his tasks, I considered my current irrational mixture of sadness, gratitude, and joy with this latest child “leaving” and, the necessary hope for our comings and goings–our leavings and returns.

Hope as defined by contemporary usage is a, “feeling that what I want will happen.”  The dictionary suggests hope differs from optimism because hope is an emotion while optimism is based upon facts.  For those who follow Christ, hope is a verb with different connotations, a combination of a desire for something and the expectation of receiving-it is an act of the will mediated by God’s gift of grace. Our hope, when rightly configured, is in Christ.  Proper hope is anchored in the reality of the Incarnation.  Our “hopes” in a particular circumstance rise above self-gratification or optimism  when the proper focal object or reason for our hope is in view-that is, Christ.  But just now, thinking about Stacey leaving, I confess my hopes do not get past the subsidiaries of my feelings and desires.

I am excited for Stacey to move into the next phase of life, just as I am already missing the exhilarating chaos she brought to our home.  I worry about her many untended “details of daily living” and the more significant challenges of long term relationships.  Like every parent, I want her choices to be 100% correct, her work full of meaning and purpose, and her relationships made whole without pain.  However, her last three years have been a fertile mixture of tears and joy and my experience, like hers, finds wisdom is gained, more or less, in difficult circumstances.

But to be honest, I don’t know what is best for Stacey.  I’m a physician. Come to me with a skin cancer I can give an informed opinion.  But, the question of the most faithful way to use Stacey’s many gifts, or how she should navigate her serpentine family relations, I confess ignorance.  As a younger man I gave my opinions more freely than I do now.  I sense the fragmentary nature of my understanding and I am forced to look away from myself for authentic hope and wisdom.

When I stand among the Colorado mountains I am filled with awe and wonder.  The high mountain streams and wildflowers found in the midst of massive beauty brings me to the feet of our mighty Creator God.  But walking in this cold rain, trying my best to not wallow in the sadness of leaving, I am driven to the God of Hope.

Those who waited for the first Christmas–for the coming of Christ–waited with a hope couched in the faithfulness of God.  But, this was a costly hope.  The miracles they knew were in the distant past and their dangers in the present.  We modern followers of Christ can have hope couched in the faithfulness of an Incarnate God.  As Stacey leaves us and comes into a new part of life she, and we, are forced to choose again between an irrational optimism in self and the true hope.  To worship the Creator and not the creation is to hope in Christ.  Our hope is in the same God who knows our comings and goings, even before this fantastic world was created and loved us so much that he become as we are in order to reclaim us.   It is into His arms I commit my hope this cold winter’s night and with Mary, Joseph, and every believer since Adam, wait for Christ.

Riley

“Mezzotints and coffee” | Cherry Street Artisan, Columbia, Missouri | Permanent exhibit

Fall is coming to the high country. Today, I woke up cold; Terry was buried in all the covers and our kitchen floor was warm, indicating that the house temperature had dropped below 55 degrees and the in-floor heat had kicked on. But in our high mountain valley, still robed in summer flowers, warm days, and deep green we received subtle and unmistakable signs that change is upon us.

Colorado summers are famous for warm days and cool nights and this particular summer has been good for flowers in the garden and the mountain meadows. But, on Tuesday the dianthus bloomed again. This hardy short perennial had a spectacular late spring and early summer bloom. We enjoyed the bright red flowers until Independence Day and then it went dormant, seems this plant does not like the hot mid-summer days. But when the days grow short again and the nights cooler, the dianthus gives us a second burst of joy and a warning-summer is almost over.

Of course, in town where the humans are much more tied to the calendar, the season has clearly changed. The county fair ended last weekend and marked the end of summer while Monday’s start of high school volleyball and football began the fall academic term. My teacher friends have long faces as D-Day approaches and their “freedom days” drop into single digits. I am never quite sure if they are more depressed by the yearly reality of how few of the summer to-do items got done or the annual daunting prospect of putting some order into the wild and hormone soaked adolescent intellect. This yearly cycle and change, much like the hummingbirds starting to leave this week, remains remarkably uniform from year to year.

But here in the valley the annual change of migrating birds and the loss the aspen’s color intensity causes me to be both sad and grateful. I am sad at the loss of summer but grateful that the God who set this magnificent and ordered creation in motion also cares and preserves-His promises given to even the tiny red dianthus flower. I am grateful for the reminder of His care because Terry, Ginny, and I also feel the movement of change.

We return to Missouri in a week and much is in flux. The three of us know that change is probable concerning friends, living situations, work, and parts of our lives yet unforeseen. We are sad because, like the dying back of our flowers, all change has the bitter taste of loss. But in the dianthus I hope. Not hope in that beautiful created thing, but a hope that points past that lovely flower to our Creator and preserver. An old friend once said, “To garden is to be a person of hope.” I will rest in that hope; in our last week in this peaceful place, I will turn my anxiety toward His promises in these last bursts of summer.

Blessings,

David