Our Hope in Christ

By: Fraser Houston | Outreach Worker in Willowtree

In the past few months, there has been a lot of challenging situations at Willowtree. There have been feuds between neighbours, calls to CAS and the police, harassment, and manipulation, and then, most recently, the passing of Opal. It has been difficult to navigate all that has gone on, especially when we look for God’s direction in the community. Many community members have asked me what God could possibly be doing, or how I could possibly still believe He is a good God when so many horrible things are happening. Those are difficult questions to ask, and even more difficult to answer, but it is in trying to answer these questions—even simply in having the opportunity to be asked these questions—that I can see a glimpse of what God is doing in Willowtree.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be present (though just through text, phone calls, and video chats during this time) with the families at Willowtree as they wrestle with these questions. Jesus calls us to go out and share His gospel with the world, and yet He never promises us it will be easy. In fact, He assures us of the opposite: “in this world, you will have trouble” (John 16:33). As He calls us to go out into the world and become involved in our neighbours’ struggles, their suffering, their confusion, their heartache, He is calling us into a place where our faith will be challenged, we will be questioned, and where God will be doubted. And yet with that difficult, often painful and heart-wrenching, calling, He gives us this reassurance: “but take heart, for I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

I have been reminded time and again over the past few months, often in jarring and surprising ways, that God is the one who is working in Willowtree. What we and other organizations do—whether it be churches, other community outreach organizations, CAS, the police—will never be enough on our own. We can help in specific cases with specific problems. However, all of us are limited in different ways, and none of us can break the cycles of poverty, of abuse, of neglect, of brokenness.  At times this has discouraged me, and I have wondered what good I can really do working here in this community. But the moments that have lifted me up—the moments that have cut through those darker moments of self-doubt and confusion—have been those moments when people I know in the community bring their doubt, and their anger, and their frustration with God to me. In these moments I am reminded of Jesus’ promise that He has overcome the world.

Our problems will always be here. In this world there will always be sadness; there will always be pain. I believe God has brought us here to this community, not to fix the sadness or to fix the pain ourselves, but to share the hope we have in Christ: to share His reassurance, His comfort, and His promise, that He has overcome the world. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had to have these conversations with families at Willowtree. It is never an easy conversation, but it is only through wrestling with that doubt and that anger that we are able to come out the other side with confidence in what Jesus has done for us.