I read a review recently of a book by Nancy Elizabeth Bedford, "Who Was Jesus: and What Does It Mean to Follow Him?"
She writes:
Though his resurrection brings hope, the injustices still reigning in the world mean that lament and grieving are still part of our reality as followers of Jesus. Indeed, just as the resurrected One is the crucified One, who bears the marks of the crucifixion on his body and does not hide them, so also is lament ever present in our hope. Resurrection hope is not to be confused with blind optimism or wishful thinking, just as lament is not the same thing as despair or desperation. Hope means not conforming ourselves to an unjust reality, but rather imagining possibilities for transformation. That means that for there to be hope, there first must be a recognition that things as they now stand are not acceptable.
Lament springs from that honest encounter with reality and its injustices. Yet at its core is the expectation that things need not be this way. In our resistance, our perseverance, and our lamentation, there burns a flame of hope for transformation. In other words, in our hope there is lament, and in our lament there is hope, just as in the resurrected One we see the crucified One and in the crucified One we see the resurrected One.
We live in that tension of lament and resurrection, between the already and the not yet, what is and what can be and what will be.
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