Emmanuel Revealed: A Catechism on Hope

    "The gospel is bad news before it is good news."
                                                                Frederick Buechner


400 years the prophets were silent –
        yet there was, and is, and is to come,
                                                hope –

Where is hope found?
        In the dark before the dawn.

What is hope?
        It is the foundation for faith,
        the occasion for love.

How does hope work?
        Like a woman bearing a child.

What does hope do?
        It conquers idolotry.

What does hope say?
        We are growing old to be young forever.

Is hope forever?
        No, it has its end.

How does it end?
        In the consumption of love.

What is love?
        The already in the not yet.

How long must hope wait?
        Until the anchor is lifted.

When is the anchor lifted?
        In returning home.

When is this returning?
        Now and then.

What is the symbol of hope?
        The Child.

What is The Child?
        A Light proceding into the world.

How does it proceed?
        As The Word in the beginning.

What is the beginning?
        Hope.

400 years the prophets were silent –
Then our fear unto loneliness,
        pain unto brokenness,
        bitterness unto anger,
        sickness unto death,
        anxiety unto fear...

Then hope:
        The undoing of darkness –
        The unveiling drama of light.

The Assisted Living Bus Parked Outside Hultgren Funeral Home

While I stopped at the red light on Main Street,
It pulled into the parking lot and begin to unload –
I wondered who they were coming to see:

Who would take the empty seat at the bridge gathering?
Who would turn the tumbler during Tuesday evening BINGO?

The light turned green, and as I pushed on the gas –
             I saw a worn women, wearing a crown of white hair,
                                                       hand on cane,
             with bent arm lent to the young driver,
             step out of the bus into the autmun day –
I thought of resurrection –
The wrinkle of time we are given –
Then, from the back seat, my six year old asked,
             “What’s for lunch daddy?”