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I really enjoy hard conversations. In fact, I prefer them. I often find that in order to get ready to go to church in the morning, I must prepare myself for small talk because it doesn’t come very naturally to me. But if you put me in a room full of strangers to talk about deeper issues like identity, race, and reconciliation, I suddenly feel right at home.
Do you know women like this? Are you one of them? Perhaps you can’t remember little things, like your grocery list or email password, but you can name every woman you’ve met overseas while doing justice work (including where they live and their children’s names). Or perhaps you have a hard time making dinner for yourself, but making hundreds of meals to serve at the local shelter isn’t a big deal at all.
The Nature of Hope
Something happens to us when we face the world head on. I call it wild hope. Have you experienced the wild hope that comes from diving headfirst into the hard things?
You’d think we would all be too distracted by the devastation of the world to ever experience hope. With a scroll through Twitter or a few minutes watching the news, we could easily be overwhelmed with the problems that surround us. Poverty and injustice. Hatred and terrorism. Disease and war. Brutality and death. The list of ways we experience this world as a dangerous and disappointing place could go on and on and on. Yet somehow we still move ever forward—participating, working, collaborating, listening, and advocating. We walk into the heart of despair and declare our wild hope: that justice, peace, and life are possible through the one who proclaimed in this world of death and destruction, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
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It’s Time to Let Your Hope Run Wild
Austin Channing Brown is a TCW regular contributor and columnist. A resident director and multicultural liaison at Calvin College, Austin is passionate about racial reconciliation—and has a slight obsession with books. When she's not reading, you'll find Austin watching HGTV or updating her blog AustinChanning.com.
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