c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It is semi-dark when we gather for worship in a church up North. Snow is falling, temperature plunging, the day not yet fully dawned.

Darkness might have eased its hold during the closing hymn, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” a gentle tune composed 600 years ago for French nuns. But a look-at-me organist blares forth a noisy introduction that drives the people to silence. While he displays his technical mastery through four deafening verses, we mutely wait to leave.

In the vacated center aisle, I greet a friend who owns an art gallery. “This must be a big season for you,” I say. “From what I read, it is high-end items that are selling this season.” He agrees that business is good. But when I speculate that a looming recession has stirred a frenzy of buying _ get it while we can _ the gallery owner shakes his head.

He describes receiving this year’s output from his favorite artists. Not long ago, these same artists painted in browns and grays. “This year the colors are bright,” he says. “Their paintings are filled with light.”

I could understand why post-9/11 paintings were somber, but why, I ask,would today’s be bright and lively? Little has improved. We seem more divided than ever.

“I don’t know,” he says, “but I think it is hope. Artists just feel things, you know.”

Like the dawn, hope arrives slowly, almost shyly. Before the sun’s great light fills the sky, hope dares to imagine a time beyond darkness. Before the messianic king ascends the throne, hope imagines a child being born.

Before massed choirs have any cause to exult in cascades of sound, hope bids Emmanuel “disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death’s dark shadows put to flight.” Before any victory is won, hope chooses brighter colors for the night sky.

Those who control the organs of state, commerce and religion will want to take credit for the light. It is our policies, they say, that have turned the tide. It is our victory in worldly things, our management of the economy, our moral crusading, our excellence, our mastery of sound.

Hope knows better. While the proud and loud are walking in the same darkness that envelops everyone else, hope looks to the east and sees a new day, when “our sad divisions cease,” not because we figured it out, but because God has bidden it, because God has chosen to be “our King of Peace.”

Hope lingers in the center aisle after the powerful have taken their noise onward. Hope sees both the frown of need and the smile of love. Hope sees the compassionate bending to the stranger. Hope sees sadness and mercy standing together. Hope sees kindness lifting the bar of oppression. Long before justice wins its victory, hope hears a tender word, a patient bearing of burden, a willingness to listen as long as brokenness needs to speak.

Hope is seeing light even as the land remains in “deep darkness.” In time, the light will be bright enough for all to see. For now, hope is a painter reaching for a different hue. Hope is a mother bearing life in the midst of strife, a father choosing peace when the smart money is urging war, a child venturing beyond the parent, a circle welcoming those whom the righteous keep out.

Hope is a musician who has the humility to embrace silence, the self-restraint to walk alongside the hesitant, the grace to let neediness direct the swelling of sound, the self-denial to let mastery be a servant.

Hope points to the east and quietly shares the first glimpse of color.

MO/DH END RNS

(Tom Ehrich is a writer and computer consultant, managing large-scale database implementations. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. Visit his Web site at http://www.onajourney.org.)