Hints of Hope: Essays on Making Peace with the Proximate by Steven Garber

What is the proximate? And how does one make peace with it? Author Steven Garber, senior fellow for the Institute of Marketplace Transformation in Vancouver, B.C., has spent his life as a teacher in many places in the world answering these questions and exploring the intersection between vocation and the common good in a world characterized by both ruin and glory.

He asserts that the proximate, a word that means “to draw near,” “nearest,” and “neighboring,” conveys the reality that “we are close, even next door, but not the same as. At best, we are ‘nearby.’ The word gives us room to long for and yearn after what ought to be, and what could be done; it is a strange grace, but a good grace, knowing that in the frailty of this life we will never see everything we care about, everything we long for, made right.”

Rooted in the hope of the biblical promise of Jesus’ work in the world today and in anticipation of his second coming and the establishment of the new heaven and earth, Garber’s essays refuse to ignore the injustice and pain in a world of “broken hallelujahs,” but repudiate cynicism and despair by calling Christians to follow God’s command “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

Still, Garber is realistic, refusing to embrace the secular notion that one can be whatever one wants to be and accomplish every goal one sets out to achieve. He writes, “But when we begin to take seriously the questions of human responsibility in history, seeing them written into the vocations that make us ‘us,’ we soon realize that we cannot do everything. That not every hope, not every need, not every question, not every longing, is one to which we can respond—and those with the tenderest hearts feel this most keenly. Remembering to remember dilectio proximi (the love of neighbor) is a grace, reminding us that love must be proximate, never everything for everyone, but something for someone.”

Though Hints of Hope doesn’t include discussion questions, Garber’s engaging and thought-provoking essays could be a great fit for small group discussion.

(Paraclete Press)