Infinite Hope

One of the wise sayings of Martin Luther King Junior was that ,“We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” This bears thinking about at Easter 2024.

We are not short of disappointments. Over the Easter weekend, Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland and former President of the European Council, has been speaking of Europe being in a pre-war situation: “I don’t want to scare anyone but war is no longer a concept from the past.” What a disappointment to those who hoped that Europe had emerged from its violent past to chart a peaceful future.

This disappointment is compounded by the fact that the current wars are not only bringing death and devastation to many of our contemporaries, they are also sucking resources into the arms industry that are desperately needed elsewhere. The real war that we need to be fighting in our time is not against one another. It is against the common threat of climate catastrophe – in a context like Malawi this threat is now becoming a reality. The human community has not been able to organize itself to counter damaging climate change – disappointment!

We could go on. But we also have to attend to the question of how to cope with such disappointment? When time and again our hopes are dashed and we are left crushed and dismayed, where can we find the energy to continue the struggle? Martin Luther King points us to “infinite hope.” Here is the meaning of Easter.

South Sudan is a country that had had more than its fair share of disappointments. Catholic priest John Ashworth has lived through many of them and it has impressed on him what is distinctive about the witness of the church: “Unlike most NGOs and indeed most of the international community, the church is in it for the long haul. The church embodies immense patience and looks beyond the present suffering to a hope-filled future. In the Christian archetype death comes before resurrection, but in the end, resurrection does come.”