Our Christmas Concert on Sunday included the song "Hope for Resolution." It's a beautiful piece that combines a Zulu song with "Of the Father's Love Begotten", which was written to celebrate the end of apartheid in South Africa.

As I sat in the Sanctuary watching our choirs sing this piece, the faces of our choir members blurred with my memories of Robben Island and the informal settlements around Cape Town. I remembered the Zulu and Xhosa songs that the members of the Methodist Church I attended in South Africa sang so passionately and joyfully. I loved hearing our adult and youth choirs in Virginia singing a song of hope in Zulu with huge smiles on their faces, while our children's choir sang the credal words of "Of the Father's Love Begotten". And for the first few moments, I thought of the huge steps forward that have been made in South Africa, and the hope for further advancement there.

But as the song went on, I began to think about the places where conflict, violence, and inequality still oppress people. I thought of the slums and the hungry children I saw in South Africa, Peru, and Brazil. I thought of the growing threat of violence in Cote D'Ivoire and in Korea. It hurts my heart to think that we still kill each other, still think one race or gender is better than another, still sit idly by while people barely survive lives of hunger, need, and poverty.

I suppose that's why the arranger mixed the Zulu song with "Of the Father's Love Begotten." The hymn emphasizes the great love in the gift of God-with-us. It's not just God that is among us, it's God's love come to life in our world. That's the greatest source of hope imaginable. What other force, what other gift could transform the world? Now, the world has not yet been transformed completely. We only see glimmers of that hope come to life. But those hints of light, like the end of apartheid, remind us of God's love at work in the world.