Shifting Culture
On Shifting Culture we have conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Hosted by Joshua Johnson, this podcast features long-form conversations with authors, theologians, artists, and cultural thinkers to trace how embodied love, courage, and creative faithfulness offer a culture of real healing and hope.
Shifting Culture
Ep. 393 Hannah Miller King - Feasting on Hope
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In this episode, I sit down with Hannah Miller King to talk about hope when life doesn’t resolve neatly. We explore what it means to live in the now and the not yet, how grief, loss, and unanswered prayers shape our faith, and why Christian hope isn’t the same thing as optimism. We talk about the table, the Eucharist, and the idea that salvation is less about transaction and more about union with God. This conversation wrestles honestly with suffering, expectancy versus expectation, and the courage it takes to keep loving and hoping in a broken world - without rushing past the pain.
Hannah Miller King is an Anglican priest and writer in western North Carolina. She is the associate pastor of the vine Anglican Church and author of “Feasting On Hope: How God Sets a Table in thr Wilderness” (IVP)
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To have a robust Christian hope, we need to learn how to hold an imagination for renewal alongside a theology of suffering.
Joshua Johnson:Hello, and welcome to the shift in culture podcast which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, what does hope actually mean when life is full of suffering and pain, not when things resolve neatly, not when prayers are answered the way we want, but when loss stays put, when grief lingers, when faith feels thinner than it used to. That question sits underneath this entire conversation. In this episode, I talk with Hannah Miller, King, author of feasting on hope, about the space many of us live in most of the time, the now and the not yet. We talk about suffering that doesn't get explained away, and longing that doesn't disappear, and what it means to be honest about pain without giving up on God. And we spend a lot of time around the table, the Eucharist communion, the idea that God meets us not just with answers, but with presence. We talk about expectancy versus expectation, salvation as union rather than transaction, and why Christian hope is an optimism, but something deeper, sturdier and harder one. So this is a conversation for anyone who's tired of platitudes, for anyone learning how to wait, and for anyone wondering whether God is actually with us in the middle of it all, spoiler alert, he is so join us. Here is my conversation with Hannah, Miller King. Hannah, welcome to shifting culture. Excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for the invitation, I'm going to take you into a story. I remember, I was on the edge of the desert. I was working with Syrian refugees. I knocked on this refugee door, went in, had some tea with Ahmed and Nora, and the week before, they lost their three week old babies, they were on ventilators in hospital. A government plane flew over the hospital, dropped a bomb on electrical plant next to hospital, power went out, ventilators went out. His baby died, and they fled. He was working in the army at the time, the Syrian army, and he fled over to Jordan. So we're sitting there like, what do you say to somebody that has just experienced loss of their home, loss of their twin babies. The only thing I knew what to do was, was recite Psalm 23 that God will be with them in the middle of the darkest valley, that he's going to set a table before them in the presence of their enemies, that the table of withness will be with them. It's the only thing that I knew how to what to say. My question is, in the midst of darkness and disillusionment and pain, is there hope in the table? Is there hope that God is going to be with us. Is it true? Is there hope?
Hannah Miller King:Well, I love that. That's what you said to them. Because I think a lot of times Christians feel pressure to offer platitudes and sort of silver linings, but in the face of permanent loss, there's no platitude that can resolve our experiences, but God has entered into our experience in the person of Jesus, and he's entered into the darkest depths of our experiences. And so that sense of solidarity and presence is at the heart of the gospel. I've personally found a lot of hope and healing in not just the imagery of the table, but the actual experience of the table in the Lord's Supper, because it's a reminder to me and to all of us that Jesus doesn't just come to be with us in our suffering, but he he also feeds us in the midst of it. And he says, I will be enough for you. I will sustain you in your travails, and I'm giving you a taste of the future feast that I have for you, and for those you've lost,
Joshua Johnson:we're recording this in the middle of Advent. I think it'll come out in the beginning of the year, but in the middle of Advent, you know, as we're waiting for something, and we're waiting the dark, we're lighting candles so we could just see a little flicker of light. Hopefully this Jesus is going to come, but one of the Advents that we have now today, after we remember what has happened, and then we also then Advent, the the returning of Jesus, so as he's going to reconcile and make all things new. And we're excited about that day. We're. In this middle now, but not yet, of the kingdom of God, that there is still pain and suffering and disillusionment, but we're adventing Jesus that he's going to be he's going to be coming daily. He comes daily to us in the midst of our pain, in the season of darkness as you've sat through loss in your life. What does this season mean to you as you're sit with a coming of Jesus in your life?
Hannah Miller King:Well, Advent specifically, has been very important for me, because in many different sort of Christmas seasons of my life, I've been feeling acute loss or bereavement, and in the world, we're expected and encouraged to be Holly and jolly, and, you know, celebrate peace on earth and that warm, fuzzy feeling in our hearts. But that doesn't always map on to our actual lived experiences. And so what Advent has done for me is it has reminded me that actually, the brokenness and the pain of life on Earth is a legitimate part of the Christian experience. It's not a sign of failure, it's not a sign of you just don't have enough faith. It's a sign of the times in which we are still waiting for Jesus to return. So it's kind of given permission, I think, for bringing some of those hard feelings into the conversation with God, into a conversation about gospel hope, in a way that's not fluffy or trite. And then I think you know that maps on to the time between the times in the sense that the church lives its life in Advent. I think Fleming Rutledge put it that way, where we are a people who are living with the hope of the kingdom of God that has come, but we know it hasn't come in fullness. And so, you know, our hope is sort of fixed on the horizon. We're we're expectant that the day will dawn, but we know it hasn't fully arrived yet. So we're not going around making false promises, but neither are we saying, well, all is lost. You know, it's kind of this, this dynamic tension that I think the world really is hungry for.
Joshua Johnson:When you use that word expectant, since we're expectant, what then is that difference between expectancy and expectations? So I'm going to just go into your story as dealing with your your father as you're 11. He gets diagnosed with cancer, and then he has passed away by the time you're a freshman in college or in high school. And I can imagine that you have expectations of a father, of somebody that's going to be with you, that is not going to be gone. Those expectations are are valid, and they're real, and those expectations are are gone. They're lost. Is there even a switch or a difference between expectations and then expectancy? Has that shifted in you at all?
Hannah Miller King:Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think in sort of broad theological terms, we can be expectant without putting specific expectations on God. So we can expect that miracles can happen, that people can be healed. We can hope and pray for those things without the expectation that God is going to act in exactly the ways we would like him to, or that we ask him to. And for me, that's been an important distinction on a more personal level, expectation versus expectancy. You know, in relationships that I've had in my life where I've lost them, obviously a child losing a parent, or a parent losing a child, or any close, you know, friendship, there's a sense of, Okay, God, wired us to be in intimate relationships and to need certain things from certain people, and so there's real reason to lament when those things are are taken from us. And yet some wise guides have helped me to reframe even that lament in the sense of an expectancy that okay, really God was loving me through my father, and God is still here. So I can be expectant that God will continue to provide fatherly love to me through other sources or he'll, you know, I can be expectant that God will continue to meet my needs and to provide for me, even though they may not be in the ways that I initially had or or would like to be. You know, that sense that the real source of those gifts, those relationships, those things that we've lost, isn't gone.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, what helps you in the middle of that? I know, for me, I think the story of the Garden of Gethsemane helps me a lot of where Jesus is sweating blood. He doesn't want to go through this. It's pain. And. Anguish. It is sorrow, but he knows that there is an expectancy there of something greater that's going to happen, despite the pain and suffering that he's going to go through. What helps you in the middle of that to have that expectancy,
Hannah Miller King:I think what helps me is to see the giver beyond the gift. So this experience that I loved is gone, but God is still behind it. He's still available to me. And also, in a sense, whatever I've lost to the extent that it is going to be redeemed by God, it will be given back to me one day. And so I have a great sense of expectation about the world to come, and things that are irreparably broken now being resurrected and being made new. And I'm really looking forward to that.
Joshua Johnson:So in this now, but not yet, time where we have some of those glimpses. We have some healing. We have good gifts of God. We have God's presence, but we have pain and suffering. How does then the actual communion table? How does communion and the Eucharist help us be with God in the midst of all of this.
Hannah Miller King:It's the perfect already, not yet meal, because it's a feast. Now we feast on resurrection. We have this sort of sample of new creation that has come into the world and the body of Jesus. But it's also just a foretaste. It's kind of a glimpse of that heavenly feast when we'll be with Jesus face to face, and all those we've lost will be seated around the table with us, and we can see them again. You know, when you think about the Israelites wandering in the desert on their way to the Promised Land. God gave them manna, it may not have been the most exciting meal to eat every single day, but it sustained them on the journey. It was enough. It was exactly what they needed to, you know, not wear out, and it tasted like wafers of honey. So it was, it was a taste of the sweetness to which they were headed. So, I mean, the biblical authors make that connection for us in the Lord's Supper and in our manna, which is the Eucharist, but also is Christ. It is Jesus. He gives us himself, and he gives us enough. He gives us what we need to be faithful while we're waiting for him to return.
Joshua Johnson:You talk about salvation, not as transaction. So what is salvation?
Hannah Miller King:Yeah, salvation is union with Jesus. It's being made one with him. It's relationship, it's unbroken fellowship. And at communion, we rehearse that, because we don't just get God's stuff. At communion, we get God himself. This is my body given for you. You know, we take the bread into our bodies, and we have to, we have to open our hands to receive it. So we're giving something of ourselves to Him, and then he gives us himself. So salvation, I think, is inherently relational. It's not just a change of status, but it's it's a dynamic communion and fellowship. It's a fellowship of the Trinity. How do
Joshua Johnson:you often see people view salvation and their relationship with God that is not quite that communion?
Hannah Miller King:Well, I think just having grown up in evangelical spaces, I see a lot of kind of bargaining transaction, you know, I I do this to get that that can be kind of toxic on either end. It can either be, God, I'm doing this, and therefore you owe me, and I have definitely felt that myself, so I'm not, you know, calling anyone else out, or it can be, oh no, this horrible thing has happened. God must be displeased with me. I must have done something wrong. I've seen that kind of fear and suspicion, I guess, towards God, and I think you know that's really both of those things are rooted in just a false understanding of what we've been invited into and how we get there.
Joshua Johnson:Have you moved into a different season in your life, moving from a transactional view of God and into a view of God of like, Hey, this is about God with with me and me with God and communion. What was the story behind that shift for you, if you had
Hannah Miller King:that so in seminary, I was at a school that really emphasized this union with Christ as really what salvation is, and that lit me up intellectually. It made a lot of sense. To me, I was seeing it in the scriptures, but in my life, I was still operating with that other way of relating to God, the transactional view, and it really was taking communion every week at my church when I was invited to come forward to receive the elements, and I didn't get to bring a seminary paper with me to earn my wafer. I didn't get to, you know, have a task or a to do list to bring. I just had to come and be vulnerable and and be hungry and for someone to give me communion, look me in the eyes and say, the body of Christ given for you. It was, it felt very vulnerable, and I had to sit with that for a little bit. What am I? What am I feeling? What am I afraid of? And I realized it was, it was this fear of, will God want me if I don't have something to do for him or to bring to him? And so, you know, at communion was when I really began to hear the answer that yes, God wants me, and he gives himself to me, just as I am, and it's just an invitation to come and to receive and to be with him.
Joshua Johnson:How do you balance then that where, Hey, God wants you no matter what, and you don't have to do anything, and balancing it in a place of being involved in ministry and actually working, sometimes you would think, Hey, I'm working for God, and I'm going to be doing it. I mean, I would expect that you fall back into some of those, those things at times, and then you have to remind yourself, no, God is with me. It's all about union and here, and I don't need to do this. How do you balance that? How do you say we're going to do good work with God and for God, but it's not dependent on my good work.
Hannah Miller King:So, you know, the book I just wrote is all about the table, and so that's kind of the the frame that I'm working from here. But you know, if, if it's true that we can just come hungry and be fed and be loved and be filled and be brought into God's fellowship, it's also true that he then sends us out into the world to bear witness to that. And so, you know, in my tradition, every Sunday, after we receive the Lord's Supper, we're then sent out with sort of a commissioning to go forth into the world in the power of the Spirit. And I think that's a really helpful way to understand Christian mission, because it it starts it with our having been fed first, and then we're going out with that fullness to feed others. We're literally given the resources to share with others, and we're shown how to do it because we're following in the footsteps of our Savior, who get made himself a gift. So then we go and do likewise, but we're bringing people back to that same table. We're saying, Come and eat with me
Joshua Johnson:and be fed. I think that receiving is something that's really important. I don't think we often do that. I see a lot of people, when they're thinking about life in the world and being on mission, they're saying, Okay, we're gonna love God, we're gonna love others, we're gonna love the world. And in the midst of saying we're gonna love every everyone, and love the world, love God, there's no receiving of that love from God, so that we can then give love to others. I think that the only way that I could love others well, or love the world well, is to love and the overflow of what I've received from God. I have to first receive the love of God. How do you see that for people, how do you get that into to people, that it really this love that you're giving has to be from an overflow of God's love in you.
Hannah Miller King:I mean, I think it's the journey of all of our lifetimes. I think that it's hard for us to believe it, because that's not how our world works. We live in a scarcity world and a competitive world and a performance driven world, so we're having to unlearn that over and over and over again. But I think that's one thing that's really instructive about the table and formative is because it is a repeated practice, you know, again and again and again, we come to the Lord's table and we receive and in my tradition, where clergy are sort of, you know, maybe sometimes seen as more elevated, or, you know, the ones dispensing with the goods, it's really important. That the clergy also receive, and before they give anyone communion, they they take it themselves, and they do that right in front of the congregation. I think it's a really powerful reminder that all of us are, first and foremost, hungry children being fed from a table that's never going to run out of food,
Joshua Johnson:but we do have a lot of fear in the world that there isn't enough, that it is a scarcity mindset, like you said, how does the image of Christ is the Bread of Life speak directly into the fear that there isn't going to be enough?
Hannah Miller King:The only miracle of Jesus that is in all four Gospels is his feeding of the 5000 that's where he sits down all these anxious, hungry people, and he conscripts his anxious, hungry disciples into the plan, right? They're like this. You know, these five loaves is not enough Jesus. And he kind of says, just, hey, just do what I'm telling you. Give them something to eat. In John chapter six, that miracle is sort of explained in theological terms as having sort of, I like to say, Eucharistic vibes. Jesus is making a point about himself. I am the bread of life, and I will never run out. In fact, there's an overflow of abundance in me, and if you want life, then you have to feast on me. So I think when we can allow ourselves to maybe suspend our disbelief and put our trust in Jesus, whether that's you know, okay, I'm giving up my Loaves and Fishes. I'm giving up my tiny resources to you, Lord, in obedience to your command, or I'm distributing resources that I don't think are going to be enough, or I'm just coming myself and I'm hungry and I'm anxious and I'm afraid you don't see me. God help me just to have the courage to open my hands and ask. I mean, I think that's a really scary starting point for a lot of people, depending on the season of life they're in, but we're invited to practice that over and over and over again.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, the Eucharist speaks to our broken bodies as well. It's an embodied type of experience that the Christian faith is really embodied. How do you think the Eucharist does speak to a place or confronts our tendency to maybe spiritualize our suffering away of saying that, hey, maybe I need to do something so God can heal me or my body doesn't matter, because I actually have a broken body. How does the Eucharist speak to our embodied faith, even through our broken bodies?
Hannah Miller King:Well, a couple of things there, beginning with the fact that you know the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, is a meal in which we remember something Jesus did in his body on our behalf, I think it's easy to keep salvation in the realm of the abstract, because we didn't actually see the crucifixion, but at the Lord's table, we remember his life was literally poured out and his body was literally broken, and that somehow that has something to do with us and our bodies. And that's the second thing, is that it's a meal that we don't just think about. We take and eat. And so it forces us to get out of the realm of abstraction by saying, you know, get up and chew this thing and swallow it. And so I do think it can be a very powerful way to recapture the fullness of Christian faith and the fullness of Christian hope, that God didn't just come to fix our ideas or Save Our Souls, but that he has come to renew and restore our bodies through the work and the Ministry of his body.
Joshua Johnson:What do you think it'll take to have the church take this seriously, of an embodied faith that we could minister and then care for people who are sick and broken, who are disabled, traumatized, exhausted, that this embodied way of life Christian life, what's it going to take to get us out of an intellectualized, heady faith into an embodied way of living?
Hannah Miller King:Gosh, that's a great question. I think I don't know, but I think we're headed. Our culture is headed in a direction that's going to maybe bring things to a head here sooner than later, because we've become so digitized and disembodied that we've got really weird extremes now people are living with and yet at the same time, I think people are getting really tired of it, and they're getting really disenchanted with everything being online and everything being just on a little screen. So I. Think there's a there's a huge missional opportunity to to recover our own tradition of a God who took on flesh in order to renew the world, and that our creatureliness is not something to be transcended, but it's something to be redeemed.
Joshua Johnson:If the church then can speak into this digitized age that we have, this age of artificial intelligence, and this age of a being online into a tactile, embodied faith with community, one to another. What does it look like, and what does it mean to be human in this world that is trying to get us to a place that we want to transcend our humanness.
Hannah Miller King:Well, I think one thing you you might have just alluded to there is that it means we're going to have to be together, and we're going to have to be in person together, and that's going to be messy. Relationships are really hard. Church church spirituality is a lot cleaner when we're sort of curating our own experience of it through podcasts and, you know, online church and things. But real sanctification happens in 3d with people who can say, hey, you you think you're really great, but you're you're kind of not that great, like you just offended me, or, Why can't you be nice to me? And so, you know, getting back to the table, when we are communing with Christ, that's not just a private me and Jesus experience. It's, it's a communal, corporate experience. It's, this is God's body on Earth, and it's these people around me who sometimes are hard to love, but that's where we learn how to be God's family, with our physical disabilities, with our emotional traumas that are kind of leaking all over each other, you know, we're learning how to be a family in real time around the table.
Joshua Johnson:How do we do that when we're going to be wounded? We're gonna be wounded by really horrible relationships, relationships that are not are messy. How do we not slip into bitterness or denial like this isn't taking place, but actually be honest with who we are and who God is in the midst of us,
Hannah Miller King:yeah, so I mean, community and unity is not authentic if it's just papering over all the problems that we have. So real community is going to involve real conflict, which I think is another reason why we don't like it, because conflict is hard, so I think we need to get better at reconciliation, which is kind of an old fashioned way of talking about conflict resolution, where we can go to those who've hurt us and talk about it, and where we can extend forgiveness or ask for forgiveness. You know, I'm working on that in my marriage every single day, working on that with my children. And of course, the gospel is really what makes it possible, because the gospel both calls sin what it is, and also allows for forgiveness instead of just, you know, cancelation. So obviously in church, you know, there are times when maybe reconciliation isn't going to be so straightforward, or maybe where the people who need to ask forgiveness refuse. And so sometimes fellowship is broken. But I think the command to as far as possible with us, be at peace with all men, is is really all we can do. And if we've done that, then we've been people of peace, whether that peace has been received or not. And so then you can move on to a new place, or new relationships. You know, having extended the peace that was yours to give.
Joshua Johnson:What do you think that looks like, practically, for when it's not safe or it's not possible, somebody doesn't want to receive reconciliation or actually participate in it, or say, hey, I need to ask for forgiveness. I'm like, No, screw this. I don't want anything to do with that. Like, what, what happens for you in the middle of it? Like, what does it practically look like for us to extend peace and then, like, truly forgive, even if reconciliation of the relationship isn't possible or even going to them isn't safe?
Hannah Miller King:Well, I think for people who are in situations like that, it's really important to have trusted friends and advisors so that you're making those hard decisions, not on your own, and then you're making them, and you have the support behind you at times for me that has looked like waiting to even attempt reconciliation for a very long time, until I felt. Felt that I was safe enough in myself to even broach the conversation. And so sometimes I think it's a good reminder that these things can happen. They're just going to take a lot longer than we want them to. Other times, I've walked with people who they never got to have that reconciliation in this life, and the person has died, for example, or the person is blatantly unrepentant and unsafe to even attempt a conversation. And so I think, you know, there can be forgiveness and there can be peace, even if there's not reconciliation. But that doesn't mean it's not going to be painful. I think that's that's a hard thing to hold on to, that I can I can forgive, and it's going to take me a long time, and I can say Peace to you, even if I'm still in pain. And there are other times when you you've forgiven and you have peace in your heart, but you still have to hold those people accountable, and you still have to say the hard things to whoever will listen. And you know, unfortunately, that's that's a reality of our world right now, where there are people who are unrepentant and they're harming others, and so I don't think it equals unforgiveness to hold people accountable when, when, that's what we're called to do.
Joshua Johnson:You also talk about having the courage to love, even though you know that when you love, there's going to be loss. And it's kind of the same thing, like, I'm going to forgive this piece, I'm going to lose this, or I have lost this. We lose a lot. Sometimes when we love, how did you get the courage to love again after you have lost thinking that, man, hey, either I'm going to be disappointed again, I'm going to lose again. How do you How did you get the courage to love again?
Hannah Miller King:I think it might tie into what we were just discussing about taking time. Because I think when we've been traumatized, either because of broken relationship or because of a loss. It sometimes takes time to allow God to do the work of healing that needs to happen in us, so that we can say yes to love, or so that we can put ourselves out there again and have the courage to have it, have counted the cost, and know that we can handle it. And so I think, yeah, we're talking about really important things, but I think it's important to remember that this is the work God is doing in us over years and years and years. And so it's good to remember just go with the pace of the Holy Spirit in all of these things. But I do think that the more practice we have, the more again, back to those expectations, the more we expect. Okay, love is costly, and there might be fallout. There might be brokenheartedness at the end of something, at the end of a relationship, the end of a situation, but I know from experience that that that it's worth it, and that God will still be there holding me when the bottom falls out from this, and because that's what he did for me, I want to keep doing it for others. I want to keep opening my heart and giving it away.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, that's the courage to love again, but it's also the courage in the middle of that pain and the loss is to hope. Contrast hope for us, for what most people maybe expect or think that hope is. And then what is like, true Christian hope? Like, what does that look like?
Hannah Miller King:Yeah, I think, you know, I've done a few little word studies of hope. And like, the AI overview is like, hope is a positive feeling that things are going to work out, and I think that's what a lot of us kind of functionally live with, even in the church. But of course, biblical hope is deeper than a feeling, and I think it has to do with what we believe about the future. You know, what's what's on the other side of this difficult experience, this difficult life, but also how that future brings to bear on the present. So what meaning and purpose and power do we have available to us now in the midst of our difficult situations? So I think you know one reason we tend to not be very good at Hope is because we flatten it into something very simplistic, like things are going to go the way I expect, that they will the way I hope that they will, if you will. But I think you know, and this is, this is kind of what I articulate in the book, that to have a robust Christian hope, we need to learn how to hold an imagination for renewal alongside a theology of suffering. So that's again, training our expectations that there will be times when things seem to end really sadly. But also we expect that the kingdom is here and it's breaking it all around us, and one day the kingdom will be here for. Lee and all of those sad things will be untrue.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, I've had a lot of people like, go really briefly, like, hey, we have to have a theology of suffering, and it's going to be really helpful for us. And so we could hold on to that with some hope. What is a theology of suffering that can actually get us through pain and difficult times.
Hannah Miller King:Well, I think the most basic theology of suffering is that it's going to happen. You know, it's the not yet. We live in a world that is not yet fully healed, and we are not yet fully sanctified. So we're going to be the cause of our own suffering at times. And so I think when we expect it, then we're not going to be as crushed when it happens. We know this is part of part of life on this side of things, part of living in a body in the here and now. But our suffering because of Jesus can become redemptive. It can be redeemed and it can meaning. It can be put to use for our benefit, for our formation, and it can also be put to use for others' formation. Others benefit, and I have been so nurtured and strengthened by others in my life who have suffered well and who've made their suffering into an offering, into a prayer, into a gift that has become food for me, that has taught me something about the life with the life with God and and the life to come.
Joshua Johnson:There's two ways that usually people that are suffering, that are dealing with loss and pain, maybe dealing with like terminal illness, they either get bitter or they become the most joyful, amazing people I've ever met in my life. There's really two ways that it goes and it's there's not much in the middle. There is like this, like the sense for the ones that have joy, there's the sense that God is with me no matter what, and it just brings me immense joy. And then others is like, Why in the world did this happen to me? And I really, you know, hate the world, and I don't want anything to do with it. How does that joy happen in the midst of that pain and suffering.
Hannah Miller King:I think one way it happens is because in our suffering is where we meet Christ, so it's where we we can discover a deeper union with Him. I heard on another podcast a man who lost his wife and two of his children are severely disabled, and then his wife died of cancer young. And he said he gets asked this question a lot, like, how could you still believe? Or just, how do you make sense of this with your faith? And he said, you know, people look at a cross that someone has to bear, and it looks so lonely. You know, they're suffering. But he said, When you get up on the cross, you see Jesus there with you, and I thought that was such a profound way to describe how it's in those profound experiences of pain where we meet Jesus more truly and more deeply than we would have if we hadn't. And so where he is there is joy, even if it's a painful joy.
Joshua Johnson:You're experiencing joy Jesus is with you. I'm gonna bring it back into the Eucharist at the table. How do you experience life eucharistically On a random Monday morning, like we're on today, not at the table, but on a random Monday morning. What does life eucharistically look like?
Hannah Miller King:So Eucharist is just a Greek word for Thanksgiving. So I think the Eucharistic life begins with gratitude, a recognition that everything we see is a gift. And when we in thanksgiving, then offer that life, offer everything we see back up to God, it becomes Eucharist in another sense, it becomes an offering to God for the life of the world. So I think the Eucharistic life is one that is yielded to God for His purposes, in gratitude, in trust, in thanksgiving, in obedience, sometimes a very painful obedience. And saying, here is my life on a Monday morning. What do you want to do with it? I'm giving it back to you because it's yours to begin with. And you know you mentioned Jesus in the garden, he models that for us in his life. He makes it a sacrifice to God. And then God, of course, multiplied his his gift of self to save us all. So I think in a small way, our lives can be Eucharistic in the sense that they can be nutritive. They can be life giving for others, after the pattern of our Lord.
Joshua Johnson:So speak to the people who are listening, or the people. Are going to pick up your book, feasting on hope, and we'll we'll read, what do you hope that they would receive from this episode and from your book, like, what do you hope people receive so that they can live in this world?
Hannah Miller King:I think I would hope that they receive a better understanding of how our unmet longings and our unanswered prayers are a very valid part of the Christian experience in this time and place. They're not just something to tuck away or try to pray away, but they are. They're very important reminders to us that the story of redemption is not over yet, and they can enhance our longing for the renewal of all things for this world to come. So I guess what I'm trying to say is there's a hunger inside of us that should be stoked, not suppressed, and that's what I hope people will take away. I also hope people will take away whatever Christian tradition they're a part of, however they celebrate the Lord's Supper in their church, I hope that in their experience of it, they will have a deeper understanding of the gospel and of God's love for them and of his invitation to them to come and to be fed and to feast on Christ.
Joshua Johnson:Well, Hannah, I have a couple quick questions the end here one, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give? Wow.
Hannah Miller King:Okay, let me think about what I was doing at 21 What advice would I give I had just gotten married at 21 because I grew up in the South and that's what we do. I think my advice would be to throw out the timeline here in the West, we have or we're told, here's what you need to be doing by X, Y and Z year, or else you're a loser. But I think I was very surprised when I got into quarter life midlife and realized, Oh, the timeline isn't what's happening. Things aren't progressing the way that I thought they would. So I think I would. I would say to my younger self, you know, God has his own timeline, and he has his own map, and it's it might look very meandering to you, but
Joshua Johnson:trust it. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.
Hannah Miller King:I just finished a book by sulaika Jawad, a memoir about a young woman who had cancer in her 20s, a debilitating cancer diagnosis. Yeah? Between two kingdoms, between two kingdoms.
Joshua Johnson:That's a that's such a powerful, powerful book, but it's so hard. It is
Hannah Miller King:hard, it is hard, yeah, so enter at your own risk. Unfortunately, I'm drawn to books like that, maybe for reasons related to my own story. You know, I really enjoyed hearing her process her difficult experiences, but it also made me really grateful for Christian hope, because, you know, she doesn't, she doesn't have that to end with. And it showed to me. Another book I read really recently that I loved is the teacher of nomad land, and that's a novel, but it's written by a former child refugee who is a Christian, and it's a really beautiful story about children in a hard situation, but also about grace,
Joshua Johnson:yeah, that's Daniel Nari. Yeah, he's fantastic. Have you watched American Symphony? Then that is on my list. Okay, you need to, after reading between two kingdoms, you have to watch American Symphony. Okay, so good. I mean, because sulaika is in that with her now husband, right? Who wasn't in really, he was in the very end of that. That's right book, but, man, it's such a beautiful, beautiful depiction of grace and God with us in the midst of that story of what so and yeah, Jean Baptiste is amazing. And so I think he's he's brought a lot of joy and hope in the midst of through Lakers story as well. So I look forward to that. Yes, American Symphony. Have to watch it. So, so good. Yeah. So Hannah, your book, feasting of hope is going to be available February. Anywhere books are sold, where would you like to point people to? How could they connect with you? How could they anywhere specific you'd like them to get your book?
Hannah Miller King:My website, Hannah Miller King, has a link to my sub stack, which is where I send out monthly newsletters, as well as just a Contact Me form. So I love to hear from real people, just even for no particular reason, and would enjoy connecting with people Perfect.
Joshua Johnson:Well, Hannah, thank you for diving deep right away with me, and that we actually got to go into the depths of of pain and loss and sorrow. But then there's hope in the midst of God with us at the table in the Eucharist. That he is there, that there is union in Christ, and that we have hope, even in community through the messiness and the difficulties of what that looks like. And that love takes a lot of courage, but it is worth it, and that there is hope in the midst of the story of Jesus, but also the witness of Christ with us in the middle of our lives. So thank you. It was fantastic. I enjoyed it. You.
