Re-imagining Eschatology: Pediatric Hope, Chronic Illness, and Children's Experiences

This book panel engages the recent text After the Worst Day Ever: What Sick Kids Know About Sustaining Hope in Chronic Illness, offering opportunities to re-imagine hope, eschatology, chronic illness, and healthcare from the perspectives of children. The book's guiding question asks, "What do sick children know about hope that the rest of us have forgotten?" Illustrating how children articulate hope amid chronic illness, a distinct type of trauma and adversity, the book allows their voices to contribute to the constructive work of theologies of childhood. It offers readers an opportunity to engage and reimagine doctrine and practice from children's perspectives, in light of their lived realities. The children in the text shift hope from a future-oriented expectation of assurance from God to a lived experience of abundance in the moment--as much a social resource as a feeling, thought, or virtue. Five scholars respond to the text, which identifies five practices that children with end-stage renal disease use to nurture hope: realizing community, claiming power, attending to Spirit, choosing trust, and maintaining identity. Panelists discuss significant themes and questions raised by the book.