Of anchors and hope

“Hope is the thing with feathers…” ~Dickinson

What politics lacks in poetry and art, for me, is largely made up for through the location of my particular practice. While the office buildings themselves are rather boring relics of decades past, the Capitol itself is a different story. The Capitol is hundreds of years old and is, therefore, home to some of the beauty of a bygone area.

Much of the art in the Capitol, being neo-Classical or something of that nature, is rich in symbolism. I love that. Part of the reason I can’t get into modern and post-modern art is the absence of symbols: it’s “realist,” which somehow results in a piece entitled “Apartments in Brooklyn” resembling a giant rabbit.

But I digress.

One of the symbols I love, and have come to love all the more as I learned its history, is the anchor. I first noticed it on the flag and seal of the State of Rhode Island: a single anchor accompanied by the word Hope.

I used to think of hope as Emily Dickinson did: it was something I was supposed to have, but it was somewhat ethereal. Hope was fleeting, and I spent years chasing this seemingly taunting object I was told to possess.

But my perception, I have learned over the last year or so, was far from reality. As a Christian, hope is more like an anchor than a bird. After seeing the Rhode Island flag and other anchors around the Capitol, I did some research and found that the anchor was one of the earliest Christian symbols. Anchors were regularly used in the catacombs and on early Christian jewelry and seal stones. Incorporated into the cross, “anchor crosses” were used to show that Christian’s hope firmly joined to Christ.

All this research and history was well enough, but the moment it became meaningful was this: a crisis paralyzed me my heart. I found myself much in want of hope, and acutely unaware of my ability to catch this feathered thing. But when I reached out for my Father, He told me something I didn’t expect.

You hope is Me. Just as I will never leave you nor forsake you, your Hope will never be further away than your remembrance of the One who ransomed you.

In my moments of greatest weakness, my hope, because of the Person in whom it lies, is no less than in my moments of greatest strength. I get distracted by the feathered things flying above. I occasionally catch them, just long enough to be grieved by their flying away. All the while, I’m neglecting the reality that my Hope is, at that moment, the very thing grounding and sustaining me.

I need no more, and I could survive with no less.

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf…” ~Paul (Hebrews 6:19)

“There are times when things look very dark to me, so dark that I have to wait even for hope. It is bad enough to wait in hope. A long-deferred fulfillment carries its own pain, but to wait for hope, to see no glimmer of a prospect and yet refuse to despair; to have nothing but night before the casement and yet to keep the casement open for possible stars; to have a vacant place in my heart and yet to allow that place to be filled by no inferior presence – that is the grandest patience in the universe.
“Thou hast made waiting beautiful; Thou has made patience divine. Thou hast taught us that the Father’s will may be received just because it is His will. Thou hast revealed to us that a soul may see nothing but sorrow in the cup and yet may refuse to let it go, convinced that the eye of the Father sees further than its own.
“Give me the power to wait for hope itself, to look out from the casement where there are no stars. Give me the power, when the very joy that was set before me is gone, to stand unconquered amid the night, and say, ‘to the eye of my Father it is perhaps shining still.’ I shall reach the climax of strength when I have learned to wait for hope.” ~George Matheson