Kindling hope

The Rev Dr Richard Frazer explains why the promise of better things is just around the corner.

THERE is an old Arabic proverb that I like: ‘February weather, with its sad, cold blasts of wind, with the smell of summer in it’. It was the great Archie Craig, a pioneering minister of the Church of Scotland in the 20th century, who heard that proverb in India in 1928 at the Second Ecumenical Conference, a follow up to the First Ecumenical Conference that had taken place in Edinburgh in 1910.

There were plenty of grounds for pessimism in 1928 with the Great War not long ended and another looming and economic crash just around the corner. Archie was a man of hope who could smell the promise of summer in dark, seemingly lifeless, February soil.

Of course, people like Archie know that the earth is far from dormant through the months of winter. The earth is preparing itself for the springtime and the profusion of life and energy that we see at this fecund time of the year.

It was that capacity for hope that captured Elizabeth Templeton’s attention, and she entitled her excellent biography of Archie Craig, God’s February.

There is plenty of ground for pessimism and gloom in current events globally and in the challenges facing the church. A woman I met with a great deal to feel gloomy about, but a profound faith once told me that when all hope is lost, she can feel hope taking her gently by the hand.

The mission of the church is about kindling hope in blighted lives and blighted communities. The one whom we proclaim in our mission strategies is the author of hope. The one for whom even death on a cross was not an end, but a beginning.

The mission of God in the world, transforming despair into hope, is not the same thing as the mission of the church. We should be glad of that because in our present situation as a church there is much to be gloomy about and lament. Loss is keenly felt in so many places and hope can feel that it is slipping our grasp.

Are we the sort of people who can smell the promise of summer, even in the bleakness of winter? It is helpful to remember that we are not defined as Christians by optimism, but by hope. Whatever fortunes human institutions might experience, the Spirit of the Living Christ is at work and at loose in the world. It is our task to find out where the new shoots are emerging, where summer resurrection is coming and get involved.

“ Archie was a man of hope who could smell the promise of summer in dark, seemingly lifeless, February soil.

Tim Dearborn a writer about mission has said: ‘It is not the church of God that has a mission in the world, but the God of mission who has a church in the world.’ That perspective invites us to defy despair, to let go of many settled and even treasured habits and structures and re-imagine the church’s role in the community. As I look around the church I see so many communities doing new things, not just seeking to preserve the old ways.

This time for the church is a kind of wintering and nature reminds us that these are an essential part of the cycle of life.

Just as the earth can look dark and lifeless amid winter it holds within its dark embrace the promise of summer. In the Church of Christ much is going on under the surface, often unnoticed and unaccounted for, yet full of life and promise. A new chapter is opening in the story of faith in our land. It is often not the restoration of old ways, but the emergence of the new.

We should be people like Archie, God’s February.