“HOPE”
When we mark time, we often look ahead with hope. Whether it be the beginning of the secular year, the Jewish year, or a new year of our lives after a birthday, we look forward to the promise of the year to come.

Sometimes we mark time looking back with gratitude for the blessings of our lives. At other times, we are simply relieved to leave behind a particularly painful period. But the challenge at these moments is not to linger on the past or distance ourselves from it, but to be open to the possibilities that lie ahead. To be able to move forward with anticipation, with excitement and with hope sustains and nurtures us in this magical journey of life.

Hope is not wishful thinking. Nor is it fantasy or envy. Hope is not an activity, but a way of being. It is not the pursuit of something, but rather an openness to grow from whatever might be presented to us.

Yet neither is hope passive. It does not mean being at the mercy of the random events of the universe, but is reflected in a willingness to take hold of those events and create something good, something positive. Sometimes it means looking directly into the darkness and uncovering the light of promise.

When Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen was our guest in Charlotte, I went down to Carolinas Medical Center to hear her present grand rounds. To a packed auditorium, she told story after story of hope. Not that every story had a happy ending. But each story reached beyond the obvious challenges of disease and death to find moments of healing, connectedness and hope. The audience was clearly moved. After the lecture, as we began to head outside, a surprise thunderstorm passed overhead. People were huddled under the building's overhang looking for a momentary let-up in the rain so that they could sprint to the parking garage. After a few minutes, the torrential rain suddenly turned into a light drizzle. Most people walked quickly with their heads down, huddled against the drops still falling. Others looked warily to the sky, eying the still-ominous clouds overhead. And I suddenly became terribly sad. Because after so many inspiring stories of reaching beyond visible adversity for signs of hope, I seemed to be the only person looking up at the sky to see if I might catch a glimpse of a rainbow.

We have to keep our eyes open to see hope. When faced with unbearable adversity, we must sometimes shut our eyes momentarily in self-defense. But when we are willing to look into the looming, dark clouds, we might perceive something beyond them that, at first, might be obscured from view. Or we may need to summon the courage to keep staring into the darkness, searching for something more profound which may emerge.

Of course hope can be much more than the antidote to despair. Hope can be the lens through which our joys and blessings are magnified -through which the purpose of our journey is revealed.
I am reminded of going to the theater, watching the curtain go up to reveal vivid scenery immediately behind it. Then, over the next few minutes, the stage lights come up slowly to reveal the essential story emerging behind the painted scrim. In the growing, more distant light, our eyes are able to see past the eye-catching façade to recognize the true message, momentarily concealed by the conspicuous foreground.

This month we will read the story of our ancestors' journey from slavery to freedom, from disbelief to revelation, from futility to fulfillment. As an enslaved people, they could not fathom freedom. As a free people, they could not comprehend security. As a people of God, they struggled to understand their mission. As distanced readers, we can observe the promise contained in those stories- the hope that surrounded our ancestors. But only their visionary leaders could perceive what lay beyond their immediate circumstances.

So it often is with us. It is easy to become blinded by present circumstances unable to see that the richness of our experience might lie just beyond the range of our narrowly-focused vision. It is tempting to reach for the goals we set, unaware that our true potential might stretch far beyond what we might have at first imagined.

As we embark on a new year, may we be open to the prospect of hope. May we step back from our present preoccupations every so often and look into the future toward the hope and the promise that is ours - if we dare to open our eyes, our minds and our hearts to the possibilities.

B’shalom,
Andrew Bernard
Cantor