I have recently come across a word, new to me, but with its roots deep in the English language (recorded in the 16th century), and revived a couple of years ago, during the pandemic. We know the word ‘despair’, being bereft of hope (from Latin sperare, meaning ‘to hope’). But we have lost its positive – indeed, its actively positive form, ‘respair’ indicating regaining or restoring lost hope.
I came across it while I was editing an article for an academic journal, so I automatically ran a line through the ‘s’ to create the more familiar ‘repair’. I thought it was a mistake. But a few sentences later it came up again, so I looked it up. And then I stopped, and sat back in my chair, to bask in the sunshine of a whole new word, that I hadn’t realized was missing from my vocabulary and my mind. And I gave thanks to God.
I had always thought of ‘despair’ as an irreversible word; the sin against the Holy Spirit; Judas standing by the tree on which he was to hang himself – in the words from Jesus Christ Superstar, ‘Damned for all time’. That has to be a possibility, of course, but maybe we shouldn’t give up on hope too soon. The final judgment is not ours to make. What if God holds out the offer of respair, even when, to human eyes, all seems lost?
While I was thinking about this, I saw a TV programme advertised, ‘Mariupol: Unlost Hope’ (PBS, Monday 3rd April). I haven’t managed to see it yet, but it says it is based on the testimonies of ordinary people who were in that city when the Russian invasion was taking place. It calls itself, ‘the story of a city where everything but hope has been destroyed’.
Again, I made a private nod of thanks to God who had pursued me with the notion of respair, and now gave me the idea of unlost hope. This hard-won gift comes from people who have suffered terribly, who have lost everything, and yet, amazingly, find that it is possible for hope itself to be unlost.
I love this capacity of language to challenge and surprise, and I hope you will also pause and sit back, wherever you are, to delight in the possibility of respair and unlost hope.
Back to my original editing error: you may have come across a TV series, The Repair Shop, which became very popular during the various lockdowns. The format is that people bring much loved objects, often things that have huge significance in their family life, but have fallen into disrepair. A team of experienced craftspeople lovingly repairs and restores each item, culminating in the big reveal, when the object is restored to the owner. Warning, don’t watch without a hanky! It’s a real tear-jerker.
Here’s an idea. What if every one of our churches took up a calling to be a Respair Shop? What if we could do the same for people’s shattered lives, and shattered hopes? We would bring them to the Carpenter of Nazareth for loving restoration, and return them, healed and whole, to live with unlost hope.
God, Respairer, Redeemer,
Restorer of souls;
help us to offer
unlost hope
and loving restoration,
at the hands, and by the grace,
of Jesus Christ.
Amen
Janet Wootton
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