Hope

Title: “Hope: Advent”, Part of the Tabiji Eggshell collection. “Tabiji” means “journey through” in Japanese.

Media: eggshell, acrylic paint, thread

side view

Seasons of night can seem to be made completely of broken shards around our feet, emptiness within, and bordered by more jaggedness than we’d prefer. The silence can be deafening, as can be imagining our anguished cries echoing around in the small curved space of an eggshell.

It is into our darkness that Hope comes, stretching itself out over our emptiness, covering us, bracing and embracing us. Not necessarily promising the happy ending we may have our sights pinned on, but offering enduring companionship all along the way, wherever the road leads - and beyond. I hesitate to hope for specific outcomes these days - not because I am a faithless person, but because in doing so, I may miss something far better that God (however you understand a higher power) is creating. It’s a safe assumption that God’s ideas are better and more far-seeing than mine, so I can practice being content, and continuing to step into what I cannot see, no matter how murky and messy.

Give me the company of Hope for the journey through any day. That’s what I want. Not the fluffy wishful thinking that pretends but cannot deliver. I want the real deal - gritty, tough, determined, unshakable, unsinkable, lasting Hope.

For me, this kind of Hope is embodied in the person of Jesus, with us through everything and anything that may come - the floods, the fires, all that overwhelms. If Jesus is there with us, then the strongest kind of Hope we can imagine is waiting for us, waiting with us, for us, there in the darkness.

Read the poem inspired by the collector of Hope: Advent Tabiji Eggshell.