By Sloan Dobrin

2020 is a weird year for hope. When I think back to January, we had so many dreams and plans for the year that vanished in a puff of smoke. My planner has a yearly “bucket list” in the front that now looks like a joke. I think the only thing I can actually cross off is we got our toddler potty trained.

November was when my hope hit the low point. Cases for the pandemic were going up. I was hoping for a landslide victory for my presidential candidate of choice and that didn’t happen. In fact, it took days before we knew the results. I felt so much relief when I found out that what felt like four years of outrage, fear, and sadness would be over. News of a vaccine began to become real. I began to feel hope again.

But then I started to wonder what would have happened if my candidate hadn’t won. What would have happened to my hope? And I began to think and realize that my hope had been misplaced. My hope is not in old white men, no matter how thoughtful and compassionate they are. My hope is not in a vaccine. My hope is in a “brown skinned homeless radical preaching love and justice 2000 years ago.” My hope is in a God whose kin-dom is the only thing that will matter in 10,000 years. My hope is in a Church that lives out our directive of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

I’m not there yet. I still place my hope in jobs and footballs and election results. But I’m also placing my Hope in Christmas cactuses that bloom and yeast that rises and the flicker of a candle. So here’s to a hope that will anchor our souls in the coming year. May it be a glimpse of our kin-dom that is coming.