Subjected in Hope

When everything passes away and only the promise of God remains

“The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

— Romans 8:21

There comes a time when we begin to understand that the ache we carry is not merely our own.

Something is wrong with the world.

We feel it in the body as it grows tired. We see it in those we love as strength diminishes. We experience it in friendships interrupted by death, communities that fracture, promises that cannot be fulfilled, institutions that disappoint, plans that dissolve, and places we once imagined permanent becoming strange to us.

Everything passes.

Everything beautiful seems already to carry within itself the wound of its passing.

Saint Paul does not deny this.

He gives it a name.

Bondage to decay.

The Fathers understood this without sentimentality. They did not flee into the desert because they hated creation. They went there because they wanted to see creation truthfully. They stripped life down until there was nowhere left to hide from death, from themselves, or from God.

A cell.

A mat.

A little bread.

A psalter.

The Name of Jesus.

And death always near.

The desert removes the illusion that we possess anything.

This body will return to the earth.

Those whom we love will be taken from our sight.

Our work will pass into other hands.

Our names will eventually be forgotten.

The things over which we lose sleep today will someday belong to a world in which we are no longer physically present.

The monks remembered death not because they were morbid but because they wanted to become free.

Memento mori.

Remember death, and suddenly much of what tyrannizes the heart loses its power.

The need to prevail.

The need to be understood.

The need to justify oneself.

The need to arrange the future.

The need to preserve a particular identity.

The need to make everything come out correctly.

Death stands silently before all these things and asks:

And then?

Yet Christianity does not end there.

If it did, the desert would be unbearable.

Paul says something astonishing. Creation has been subjected to futility—

in hope.

Those two words contain almost the whole Christian mystery.

In hope.

Decay does not have the final word.

Loss does not have the final word.

Age does not have the final word.

Failure does not have the final word.

Death does not have the final word.

Even the grave does not have the final word.

For Christ has entered all of it.

The Son of God did not save us by standing outside the futility of creation. He entered it. He became tired. He wept. He was misunderstood. He was rejected. He watched friends leave Him. He suffered. He bled.

And He died.

God entered the place we fear most and filled it with Himself.

This is why Christian hope is so different from optimism.

Optimism says that perhaps things will improve.

Hope says:

Christ is risen.

Optimism depends upon circumstances.

Hope remains when circumstances offer us nothing.

Optimism imagines a favorable future.

Hope entrusts the future to God.

The modern elders understood this profoundly. Again and again they teach us not to demand that life become comprehensible before we surrender ourselves to God. We do not need to know how everything will resolve. We do not need to construct the next chapter before the present one has ended.

We need only remain with Christ.

This has become increasingly real to me.

For much of life we imagine freedom as the ability to determine what happens next. We think peace will come when circumstances finally arrange themselves according to some recognizable pattern.

But there is another freedom.

Perhaps the only freedom that cannot be taken from us.

To belong to Christ.

Alive or dead, I am the Lord’s.

Healthy or sick, I am the Lord’s.

Known or forgotten, I am the Lord’s.

At home or in exile, I am the Lord’s.

Certain or uncertain, I am the Lord’s.

With answers or without them, I am the Lord’s.

This is the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Not the freedom to escape mortality, but the freedom of discovering that mortality cannot separate us from Love.

Then even suffering begins to change.

Not because suffering becomes good.

Not because grief ceases to hurt.

Not because we should pretend that loss is anything other than loss.

Christ Himself wept.

But suffering is no longer a sealed room.

A door has been opened within it.

And beyond that door is resurrection.

Perhaps this is why Paul says that creation waits with eager longing.

The whole world is leaning toward something.

Every autumn leaf falling to the earth.

Every aging face.

Every grave.

Every ruined city.

Every body slowly returning to dust.

Everything seems to whisper the same thing:

This is not the end.

Creation is waiting.

And so are we.

There is an immense relief in finally allowing the world to be what it is.

Beautiful.

Wounded.

Passing.

Beloved by God.

But not our home in its present form.

We do not have to force permanence upon what God has permitted to pass away.

We do not have to demand eternity from people, institutions, places, roles, or circumstances.

We can love them deeply without asking them to save us.

Only Christ saves.

Perhaps this is one of the final lessons of the desert.

Hold everything lightly.

Love everyone deeply.

Possess nothing.

Remember death.

Say the Prayer.

And wait.

Not with despair.

Not with resignation.

But with that strange and almost unbearable expectation Saint Paul sees trembling within the whole creation.

For something is coming that we cannot yet see.

Not merely the restoration of what we have lost.

Something greater.

“The glory that is to be revealed to us.”

And perhaps after enough stripping, enough loss, enough relinquishment, the heart finally becomes simple enough to say:

I do not need to know what tomorrow will bring.

I do not need to know how the story ends here.

I know only Christ.

And Christ is risen.

Therefore I can wait.

Therefore I can suffer without despair.

Therefore I can love what is passing without trying to possess it.

Therefore I can grow old.

Therefore I can lose.

Therefore I can die.

For creation was subjected to futility—

in hope.

And so was I.

Everything is passing.

Christ remains.

And that is enough.