I work in a hospital which lies in a not-so-nice part of my city, to put it politely. Every day, I see homelessness, addiction, and brokenness, and that’s just along the street on my drive to work. Step inside the hospital, and it’s much the same population, brokenness now compounded by life-altering illness and injury. There’s darkness, everywhere. Hopelessness, everywhere. And every day I ponder whether this population I work with can see any light at all. I ponder whether this population can be seen in any light at all.

We are accustomed to happy endings and resolutions. The movies we watch, the books we read, the scenarios we play out in our imaginations – always working toward the untangling of the tricky woven web of circumstance. And time after time, we win. Or at the very least, we don’t lose. Whether we find the golden ticket or the silver lining, everything we consume leads us to believe things will work out for good in the end.

Many of our faith communities preach the same story. With the right combination of prayer, scripture, and faith, our plans – no, wait, God’s plans – are to prosper us, not to harm us. To give us a future and a hope. For things to work out in our favor, because we fought the good fight and kept the faith. 

But what about when circumstances don’t turn around? When we find ourselves walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and the only thing around the corner is further hell? When the silver lining is nothing more than a needle in a haystack; or, more aptly, a needle offering a temporary numbness from the pain of everyday life?

I’ve begun to recognize two separate gospels in the Bible. The first is perhaps more familiar – Jesus died so that we might have eternal life. But the second appears if we look a little deeper; we can see that Jesus sent out his follower’s to “preach the gospel” before he was ever hung on a cross. So what gospel was Jesus offering before his death? Simply this – freedom for the captives and the oppressed, sight for the blind, and healing for the sick. In essence, the Kingdom of God on earth.

Without completely ignoring the traditional gospel I grew up with, leaning further into this original message of Jesus has completely changed the way I see my relationships with the people I interact with. I walk with the oppressed, the blind, and the sick on a daily basis, and I try to see where Jesus’ message of hope might be able to find a foothold. A place where a sliver of light can trickle in and penetrate the darkness that otherwise envelopes their circumstance. A light in the darkness that allows me to actually see the person in front of me, the way Jesus sees them.

I internalize these things and ponder how the Kingdom of God seems to have packed up and left the area I work. As the addictions, the poverty, the overdoses pile up, my belief that there is a hope that endures begins to crumble. 

I wish I could venture an answer. I wish I could offer a silver lining, or a thread of hope. Instead I find myself asking the question, over and over.

 “What do we do when things don’t work out?”