HOPE | Natalia Stout, Class of 2022
Every day my eyes land on a simple sign that hangs in my living room. In bold black letters it reads, “In Memphis as it is in Heaven.” I pray those words every morning as I pour my coffee and clip my MSCS badge to my belt loop. Every day is marked by deep love for students, moments of laughter and connection in the hallways and in class, and seeing the ways access to education is also dignifying access to power for individuals and communities. But often, in between hopeful moments, hopelessness still threatens to creep in.
To be an image bearer who walks in step with the Spirit of God is to take up the work of reconciliation – of seeing gaps between what is and what should be and stepping into them for the sake of seeing those gaps get smaller and seeing image bearers both honored and made alive with the hope of the Gospel. But most days, that gap still feels overwhelming– systemically and personally. I walk into school and immediately recognize the inequities that have harmed and continue to harm my students and the communities they live in. Every day, I (and I would assume, we as a community of educators) see the image of God repeatedly dishonored around us. It’s hard to be hopeful that our work is actually bridging the gaps we see, much less all the gaps we don’t see.
In my first year of commitment, I’ve been asking myself: How does hope live in this in-between space of desiring restoration and living in the waiting for its fulfillment? Admittedly, I’ve really struggled with how to answer this question. I’m often scared that hope will make me seem foolish, naive, or be interpreted as some twisted sense of misguided and harmful heroism in this work. But the Lord has made my steps clear: Live faithfully within walking distance of your life and lean hard on eternal hope. I know the hope He offers will not put me to shame.
I’ve been practicing small acts of hope as resistance in the waiting, of pushing back the darkness as I wait for it to ultimately be made right.
Natalia Stout, Class of 2022
I walk through the halls, smile at my students and call them by name – darkness will not win.
I sit with parents at Basketball games and hear the sound of belief in their children – darkness will not win.
When I hear students yelled at in hallways, when suspension rates soar, when they are reminded over the PA of all the ways they are seen as the problem with our school, I affirm the goodness I see in them. I know other teachers do too – darkness will not win.
In class, we celebrate birthdays and milestones, we celebrate big wins and small victories – darkness will not win.
I see the image of my God reflected in the students who sit in my room, and run around the gym, and walk home from school, and laugh in the hallways, and cry in the office, and ask hard questions. He sees it too – darkness will not win.
I pray through their names on my way to and from school, hanging on to the rock solid hope that they are loved and seen and fought for by their Creator. He wants their wholeness more than I could ever imagine. He wants mine too. He’s coming back for us.
Darkness will not win.
And that hope will never put us to shame.
