Saturday, July 27, 2013

Deferred Hope


Proverbs 13:12
Waiting for the plane to land, again. The phone to ring. Skype to chime. The text to arrive. For those in the Army and their spouses, these are lifelines. They are the million moments in between the wave goodbye and the tears of joy and relief. They occupy too many moments for so many. Moments become minutes that creep along.
After a dangerous mission, the first thing, often even before a shower, soldiers want to call home. And the spouse knows that at certain times, that is when the day is done and the contact will happen.
But what happens when that contact doesn’t come, the phone doesn’t ring, Skype doesn’t chime, and no text arrives to say “I’m fine.” At those times hearts often go to the door, the men in uniform ringing the doorbell with horrible news. And this is repeated day after day during deployments.
This is an example of hope deferred. And if you haven’t been there, you really don’t know what it is like. Trust me, you don’t know. It is not like a business trip in another city. Usually business trips don’t involve people trying to blow you up or shoot you. (Unless you are in Chicago!) Business trips don’t involve sleeping with 80 pounds of gear strapped to your body, curled up on a dirt floor, smelling urine and feces, head resting on an MRE, just waiting for morning to come. Or the long hours of silence waiting for the Casualty Notification Team to arrive at your door and give you the news you hoped would never come, news that ends your life as you know it.
But when that plane lands and your soldier marches through the doors of the hanger at the airfield, patriotic music blaring in the background, screams and cheers deafening all, that is a longing fulfilled. A few moments of prayer, a speech, and then the word that causes the masses of family in the bleachers to pour into the center of the hanger to squeeze the life out of the soldier. You can breathe again.
All of us have moments when we hold our breath, not sure of the outcome of some event. If our lives get stuck in those moments of incomplete hopes, we get sick. But when relief comes, life ensures. It becomes a tree of life.