| "This Christmas, hope may feel elusive. But despair is not the answer." So writes columnist Michael Gerson, in an especially poignant Christmas column. Gerson's piece touches on the too-ample reasons for broad-based, societal despair — the terrible persistence of the coronavirus, the looming threat of a planet upended by climate change, the continuing strains of racial injustice and rising crime, and more. "Everything seems crying out in chaotic chorus: Things are not getting better," Gerson writes. And then he takes a painful personal turn, which I will let him share with you except to say that he examines his own "tests of hope" while "writing from the antiseptic wonderland of the holiday hospital ward" about the meaning of Christmas. "On Christmas, we consider the disorienting, vivid evidence that hope wins," writes Gerson, whose faith has been central to his life and animates his writing. "If true, it is a story that can reorient every human story. It means that God is with us, even in suffering." I am not a Christian, but I found inspiration — and, yes, even a little hope — in how Gerson draws comfort from his faith. I hope readers of every faith or none at all will find some as well.
Thank you for reading. |
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