I’ve come to believe that just swinging one’s legs out of bed is a sign of hope. So is making a future commitment in your day planner: You are working under the assumption that all parties, including you, will still be in the land of the living to make the date! German theologian Dorothy Sölle who was profoundly shaped by the horrors of the Nazi regime and her country’s participation in it, says that even the act of having a child, one who is destined to die, is an act of protest, hope and affirmation of the power of life. God is, as she points out, a lover of life.
The Nazi regime promised illusory joys. One can argue that our culture promises illusory joys and transient distractions, but that kind of happiness is fleeting.
Joy, though, is a different matter. It is the recognition that there is something beyond us that makes us more than we think we are, a contentment that we are loved no matter what, a perspective that defines us with worth and that therefore defies those and that which makes us feel unworthy, unloved and unlovable.
This message is excerpted from “No hard feelings?” by Anna Madsen in the November 2018 Gather magazine.
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