I’m not much of a soccer fan, but I couldn’t help but notice some of the coverage this year, and especially of the final game, when Spain beat the Netherlands 1 – 0. The announcer on our local New York television station pointed out that this had been the third trip to the final game for the Dutch, and still no win. The camera showed legions of local Dutch fans, both men and women, decked out in the colors of their team, rooting them on. Somehow I missed any images of the incredible disappointment they must have experienced at the loss. Instead, the short piece focused mostly on the exuberance of the fans. The nationalism. The feeling of a common bond despite differences—even among what is a relatively small nation.
As a wrap-up to her story, the announcer mentioned that the Dutch fans were nevertheless hopeful for a win in 2014. This observation seemed incredible to me. How can they be hopeful when their team had just missed a chance at victory that only comes once every four years? How can they be hopeful in a game that has become more defense-oriented, where a single, solitary goal can decide an entire 90-minute match?
Perhaps the announcer was just doing her job trying to end the story on a positive note, so viewers could have something to feel good about. Yet if you looked at the fans, the joy on their faces at being together rooting for their national team showed extraordinary exuberance. So it doesn’t seem far-fetched that some of them would quickly turn their disappointment to hope for what might happen in another four years. They were not going to give up on their team or their country. They were sure that one day they would indeed experience, if only briefly, that rare elation that their team had bested all the rest. For the feeling of victory is indeed fleeting, because as soon as the fanfare has died down, one always begins to look to the future.
This feeling of hope even in the midst of failure is the simple essence of what hope and faith are all about. Sure, World Cup soccer is only an illustration, it’s not necessarily the place from which hope and faith spring. Hope and faith come from something far deeper, something that’s difficult to describe, though describe it we must. Discovering and understanding hope and faith helps us find that drive to affirm life, to show that death and darkness, while present, aren’t the final end of things. Instead, life is an ongoing movement of change and new beginnings. Life may sometimes seem an endless game, fun at times, difficult and disappointing at others, but we must always hope to reach that connection to something pure and perfect, to keep the search going all over the world, even and perhaps especially if it comes only in the fulfillment of one glorious goal.
