A perfect graveyard of buried hopes

I was reading Romans 5 this morning (as it was the appointed epistle reading in the lectionary) and was reminded of Paul's skill as a poet.  Now one has to take a broad view of poetry to understand him thus. Not like my eighth grade teacher who gave me a failing grade on the poem I wrote (an ode to the beauty of the river that winds its way through my home town) because not every line rhymed, only every other line.  Her lack of appreciation for what might legitimately be called poetry was eclipsed only by her inaccurate teaching of history.   She was the one who taught me and literally generations of rural Nova Scotians that Abraham Lincoln was the first black President of the United States.  Alas, all educators are not created equal.

But back to a broad interpretation of poetry in thinking of Paul.  While his strength seems to be discursive reason and systematic theology, the poet rises in him from time to time.  "If I speak in the tongues of men and angels..." starts perhaps the most beautiful poetic passage he wrote (I Corinthians 13.)  I hasten to note that nothing rhymes here (at least in English).  I have not verified the Greek but I am suspicious that it does not unfold in rhyming couplets.  Paul, it seems, was a pioneer of free verse - a first century e. e. cummings.

The passage in Romans 5 that rises to the poetic is familiar:

"Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." (Romans 5:3-5 NIV)

Inspirational, isn't it? Makes one think of rising above the challenges of life and living in the hope that does not disappoint. A beautiful idea. But what about when hope does disappoint? Anne Shirley, heroine of Green Gables, has a couple of things to say about this and I trust it is not blasphemous for her to appear to contradict Holy Writ. Both are from Anne of Green Gables.

"It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?"

Ever so true. The idea is poetic and romantic, but the reality seems rather less so.

And as to hope that does not disappoint:

"My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes. That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything."

It seems to me that sufferings and afflictions do produce perseverance and perseverance character and character hope. Except when they don't. Suffering will produce these things or they will produce bitterness, pettiness, miserliness, cruelty and despair. At least this is what I have observed - as perhaps Anne Shirley did. So what makes the difference? Why is the fruit of suffering so different?

I think it comes back to Paul again. Hope does not disappoint us, because God's love is "shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us" to quote the King James Version. Suffering alone does not produce good fruit. Suffering with the love of God given to us by the Holy Spirit produces good fruit. What transforms us is not our gritting of teeth and grinning and bearing it, but rather the Real Presence of God in us through the Holy Spirit.

And here again we encounter a really nice idea - the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. But I fear that to many of us it is just that - a really nice, poetic idea. Now some poets are inclined to tell us pretty lies. But Paul isn't one of them. When he talks about the love of God in the Holy Spirit abroad in our hearts he means it as something very real - not just a lovely theological construct. That means it is something that we know to be beautiful AND true. His reality (the Holy Spirit's, not Paul's) in our hearts is to be known and experienced.

Now some are cautious of any talk of the experience of God as we are inclined, idolatrously, to confuse the experience of him with God himself. And it is therefore very easy, and perhaps safe to live in the intellectual world of the beautiful idea. But that is not what Paul is talking about or what he intends. The presence of the Holy Spirit, given to us, is what makes the difference in our lives (and our hope) - his presence known and, at least from time to time, experienced. He is not just a nice idea, but Real God in a real world of both joys and sufferings.

As I read Romans 5 this morning I was reminded not to settle for just the poetic idea but to live the hope of the real thing - a hope which does not disappoint.

Back to Anne of Green Gables. Anne talks a great talk about graveyards of buried hopes and being in the depths of despair. But if you read the book and ignore her words, instead looking at her perseverance and character, you will see that her sufferings have indeed produced an irrepressible hope - and a hope that brings life and redemption to those around her.