Reader Writes - May 2021

This was the old king’s favourite time of year. He would slip away from his household before the business of the day got under way and come out on the battlements to pray, and of course, to be truthful, to do a bit of birding. The swifts would be here any day, a cuckoo called in the beech forest below the castle, and red-rumped swallows were renewing their tunnelled mud nests under the walls. But of course the king’s peace didn’t last long; a well known lunatic came along the battlement and fixing the king with his dark and shining eyes demanded to know whence came hope. And, as usual, while the king was summoning his thoughts, the disturbance had passed on, leaving the king still uncertain where to find an answer.

Reluctantly leaving the swallows and the cuckoo, and now a green finch chirrring atop a fir, he went off to stir his chaplain, Father Mattei. Finding him, as usual, sipping Turkish coffee and lighting his pipe, the king asked Father Mattei for his advice on this question. The chaplain was much valued, in balance, but one had to accept that he was an incurable cynic. And the king wasn’t disappointed. Hope, pronounced the chaplain, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs our torments rather than relieves them. (In case you are wondering, Father Mattei came up with this one long before it was ascribed to Nietzsche.)

Once Father Mattei had had his fun, the king too found some strong coffee –the Turks were good for this at least- and they considered the lunatic’s challenge, for that was surely what it was. So the ploughman ploughs and the sower sows in the hope of a crop; that is just plain reasonable hope, give or take the ravages of wild pig. But Abraham ‘hoped against hope’ that Sarah would conceive a child in their old age because God had promised them. So Christian hope is inseparable from faith in something that otherwise would not be possible.

The long handled coffee pot, the djezva, was refilled and settled in the embers once more. Now the king was feeling excited; with hope what couldn’t be accomplished? Even Father Mattie allowed himself some enthusiasm as he delved in his Greek New Testament. Didn’t the Apostle Paul write to the Romans saying ‘May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope’ (Ro 15:13)? There it is; faith and hope inseparably linked. Christian hope rests securely on what God has already done for us, and in what he will do for us in the power of the Spirit.

The old king took his leave, a little shaky from the coffee, or perhaps Father Mattei’s hookah, and took himself home via the battlements. Ah, was that a swift he heard?! Yes! Indeed, a pair of swifts were sweeping, scimitar winged, around the palace walls. So the birds have something to teach us as usual. We hope where we also have faith. We hope where we trust in what God has promised. The world was changing, but the king had hope. A sure hope; we can dare to move forward. We can dare to love, where we dare to hope.

Robert MacCurrach