In what feels like a dismal week I have been trying to think about hope. Nearly half the country is struggling to accommodate the reality that a twice impeached, convicted felon, racist, sexist, congenital liar, has been elected President of the United States. In the final analysis, it wasn’t even close and many of us are struggling to accommodate the reality that America is not the country we thought it was. So much of what I hold dear and to which I am committed has been discarded by the President Elect and his supporters, in fact, by the Republican Party: the nation as refuge, expressed so eloquently by Emma Lazarus’s poem engraved on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free…”, where justice and equality are available to all, strong global leader of nations who share our values: all of it trashed by a vulgar, smirking would-be dictator.

I’m reading and finding a little optimism in Jon Meacham’s recent, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle. In the Prologue Meacham writes: “…progress comes when Americans recognize that all, not just some, possess common rights and are due respect. Such is a pragmatic vision with a moral component…In a democracy the pursuit of power for power’s sake, devoid of devotion to equal justice and fair play is tempting but destructive.”

It certainly feels like we have taken a huge step down a very destructive path.

What now? What should those of us who hold to a very different vision of America from Donald Trump’s be thinking and doing?

First, I think, is hope. It is tempting to give up hope and become cynical. Pondering four years of deportations, family separations, the end of federal regulations that address the climate crisis, protect Americans from polluted water and air, unfair business practices, and reneging on international treaties and peace-keeping structures such as NATO, it is understandably tempting to give in to cynicism and despair. And to forget that there will be another important election in two years and another in four years.

Whenever I experience hopelessness, I try to remember my former colleague, the late John Boyle. He was the founder and long-time director of the Counseling Center at the Chicago church that I served as Pastor for 26 years. John was also an Associate Pastor on our clergy staff and was beloved by his colleagues and members of the congregation. We became close friends as well as respected colleagues. The part of John Boyle’s story that inspires me and gives me hope happened at the end of the Second World War. John was a 22-year-old G.I. whose outfit of the United States Army was the first to enter Dachau, the Third Reich’s original concentration camp. The conditions in the camp were beyond appalling. What John Boyle saw was pure evil, an example of humankind’s capacity to treat fellow human beings with utter contempt and deadly cruelty. If there ever was reason to give up on hope and resign oneself to cynicism about the human condition, that day in John Boyle’s young life was surely it.

Instead, John decided to go to seminary and become a minister when he was discharged from military service and to devote his life to the good and hopeful. And so he earned a theological degree and a Doctorate in Psychology and began his career standing with and helping profoundly hurting fellow human beings. Instead of despair and cynicism John Boyle took his stand on Hope and it inspires me still.

In the days ahead never, ever give up hope.

In addition, resist. Commit acts of resistance in acts of simple goodness: simple, every-day acts of kindness, compassion, mercy, fairness, generosity. I believe God blesses that kind of resistance. In a recent Christian Century, Lutheran Pastor, Heidi Neumark remembers the “Miracle of Le Chambon.” Neumark,says she holds on to the Miracle of Le Chambon for dear life. So do I. (The Christian Century, November 2024)

Le Chambon was a village in the south of Vichy France during World War II. The Vichy regime governed a large area of France following the French surrender to Nazi Germany. Led by Nazi sympathizers, Vichy France continued Nazi policies including persecution, imprisonment, and deportation of Jews to concentration camps. Le Chambon was an outlier. Nearly every family in Le Chambon sheltered Jewish refugees. Villagers rescued 5,000 Jews, many of them children. Later, when asked who or what had inspired them to risk their lives to save the lives of fellow human beings, the Protestant Church in the village and its pastor, Andre Trocme, seemed to be the answer.

How had it happened? What had Trocme said or done to inspire people to resist evil at the risk of their own lives? Heidi Neumark reports that Andre Trocme preached the gospel, Sunday after Sunday, mostly on the Beatitudes and the Parable of the Good Samaritan. He also visited his people in their homes, discussing how the gospel calls people to love neighbors, welcome strangers, practice compassion, mercy and justice.

Simple acts of kindness, compassion and generosity became acts of resistance when the world seemed to have rejected or forgotten these values entirely.

Never give up hope. Practice resistance against the current malaise by acts of goodness. Seems to me that is our calling now and, in the days ahead.