Warriors of Hope
We are called to be the hope warriors of our time.
The Restoration Project staff team sat together at a restaurant celebrating my birthday on Friday, March 13, 2020. Over our town's best burger and beer, we reminisced about our recent journey to Kenya to launch the first international Base Camp, joked about the Swahili nicknames we'd received, and imagined the glory of the next several months of ministry. Droning on in the restaurant's background, several TVs broadcast sports, news, and daytime drama. It was a normal Friday afternoon.
Slowly, however, conversations quieted and then ended, as the tenor of the room shifted when the president declared a pandemic national emergency. In that moment, 2020 transformed into a war zone. It was the most appropriate Friday the 13th of my lifetime.
Now, 8 months later, the devastation of 2020 is evident to all. The loss, the grief, the confusion, the tension, the stress, the anxiety, the cancel upon cancel, the isolation, the disruption, the death, the hate. It is all just too much. This year, more times than I can count, I've sat in my man-cave chair awakened before dawn by the gnawing and gnashing of my soul, asking God for help, understanding, and relief.
Collectively, we have crossed a line in the timeline of human history. While there may be some version of "recovery" in the future, there is no going back. There are many such crossings in time...moments where everything changes. I could list them, but you know what I mean.
In every one of these moments, far more than the decisions and the struggles and the losses and the recoveries, the call of God upon us is to battle most seriously and significantly for the rise of hope. Yes, hope. You see, hope is defiance. In the face of death and darkness, hope stands defiantly and says, "Not today!" When all is taken away, and the losses are too numerous to count, hope stands defiantly and says, "And yet..."
We are called to be the hope warriors of our time. In every generation, when these moments come, there are those who give in to despair, status quo, mere survival, or quiet desperation. But in every generation, when these moments come, there are the few who defy the darkness and grip firmly onto the hope of the coming Kingdom and declare, "The sun shall yet rise tomorrow, and therefore, so will I."
Let us be among those who hold fervently onto hope. Let our children and grandchildren look back on the fathers, brothers, husbands and men of our time and say, "They were Warriors of Hope." And they changed everything.
Chris Bruno
Restoration Project CEO
Restoration Project CEO
