A Message from Mark

 May 12, 2026

Hopefully

Mark McCormick, General Presbyter

 

What comes to mind when I mention HOPE? Some might have noticed that I have been ending my email communications with “Hopefully,”. I have been thinking about hope, hopefulness, and what it means for people of faith to focus intentionally on living hopefully. I know that some hear the word hope and imagine it as passive inactivity. I would like to offer a perspective rather like John Lewis’ affirmation about freedom when he wrote, “Freedom is not a state, it is an act.” * God invites us to engage hopeful living not as a passive state of rest, but rather, as people of faith, to heed the encouragement of the Scriptures to be hopeful, to act hopefully, to mourn with hope, to share hopeful lives with others.

 

The Hebrew word, tiqvah is translated both with “hope,” and with “waiting.” This hopefulness is more engaged and expectant than mere passive waiting. Hopefulness abides within the heart of one who looks forward with the expectation that the circumstances of now are not woven into the fabric of forever. Hope is more than waiting for something to happen, it is living and acting expecting that something will happen and, because of that expectation, acting faithfully so the not yet, becomes the is now. Imagine how this orientation transforms our attitudes in the most challenging of situations. If we are focused on being hopeful, how would that impact our experiences as we encounter others? What transformative possibilities are present when we respond hopefully, and we encourage hopefulness in others and reject the limitations of hopelessness?

 

As faithful people living in this post-resurrection world, we are called to live hopefully with each other, to embrace the arrival of God’s Kin-dom in a Beloved Community as the Body of Christ. In this expectant moment, we can share Love and Grace generously without fear of scarcity because Love and Grace shared is Love and Grace expanded and multiplied. One concrete example of hopeful living is how many of our churches engage the work of the Matthew 25 Initiative attending to the lives of our congregations, the experiences of all of us impacted by the evil divisions of racism, and the deprivations that abide in households and the lives of individuals gripped by poverty. From where I stand, Sheppards and Lapsley is filled with hopeful people sharing God’s love and grace with each other, with our neighbors, and with all of God’s children. It is a blessing to be able to serve the least of these among us.

 

Thanks be to God!

Mark