Recently, I came across this artwork from Danielle Cook, an artist and author who writes about hope, empathy, and justice (@ohhappydani). I immediately resonated with the “tension of hope” in her illustration. 

She writes:

Hope in the scriptures isn’t just “waiting for the best.” There were people suffering under the very REAL weight of oppressive regimes, looking back at how God delivered His people in the past and anticipating that He would do it again in the future. They weren’t just hoping He would “arrive”. They were hoping He would set them free. 

Advent sits in the tension of what has been and what will be. It’s the promise that liberation will follow suffering. And it’s the reminder that even though what I’m waiting for hasn’t happened yet, I’ve seen it happen before, and I believe it will happen again.”

For ASJ, this last year especially has been one of sitting in this tension of hope that Cook describes. When Honduran president Xiomara Castro was elected a year ago, we were ready with ideas and proposals to seek justice based on our 24 years of experience. We had seen change happen before and we wholeheartedly believed that change could happen again.

For the last year we encouraged, lobbied, and pressured the government. We wrote proposals. We hosted more than 150 press conferences. We sat in this in-between place—the tension of hope. When one of us would begin to doubt that change would happen again and start to lose sight of our hope, another would remind us all, “I’ve seen it happen before and I believe it will happen again.” 

It was an incredibly hard year. Being met with closed doors for 10 months feels like a really long time when you are in the thick of it. Despair—the enemy of hope—waits right around the corner. But we stayed sitting in that tension of hope, continuing to encourage, lobby, and pressure—refusing to believe the work of justice is too hard or that it takes too long. 

What does it look like for ASJ to sit in the tension of hope? It means two weeks ago we rejoiced when the Honduran government incorporated our recommendations into a plan to reduce extortion—recommendations that have the potential to drastically reduce the extortion that is hurting so many Hondurans and influencing their decision to leave home and migrate to the U.S.. It means we celebrated last month when the government announced they would take on our plan and ideas for implementing summer school for 200,000 kids so that they can begin to recover the learning they lost during COVID-19. And it means we wept last week because despite our research and proposals, the Minister of Health refuses to acknowledge that 72% of the population is receiving none or only partial medicines for common diseases like high blood pressure or diabetes, and 15% of the population knows someone who has died recently because of lack of access to medicine.

As Cook writes, hope is not just waiting for the best. It’s understanding that we are called to do justice—even if we don’t get to see the results in our lifetime. A coworker in Honduras recently told me that God doesn’t usually let us see the complete picture, but each tiny tick of the needle that moves towards justice is worth it in God’s eyes and is helping to build God’s vision. We have seen justice happen before in amazing ways in Honduras, and we believe it will happen again—that is what motivates us to do this work. 

At ASJ, one of our core values is “choose hope” because we are motivated by a vision of what could be—an awareness that we sit in the tension of hope with the promise that God will not just “arrive,” He will set us free.