HOPE

Dear peeps,

On this blustery day, I think it is quite appropriate to scale the topic of hope. This is a meditation I constantly wrestle with. In fact, I woke up this morning in a daze, struggled to come up with my 50 things I'm thankful for, and wondered how I was going to get on with the day. Hope is a full-bodied word with many connotations; and to me, hope always gives rise to fear because it involves risk. To hope, one must be willing to face disappointment. In "Dark Knight Rises", Bane tells Batman "there can be no true despair without hope". Sometimes I think it is true, as Keats writes that disappointment is the parent of despair. Even scripture reveals "Hope deferred makes the heart sick..." (Proverbs 13:12). So it is quite tempting to protect your heart from disappointment by never hoping, longing, or dreaming; BUT as C.S. Lewis says, "in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it (your heart) will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenatrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy, is damnation".

I think one secret to hope is two practices that I'm quite lousy at... patience and endurance. Hope always requires waiting.

Yachal - to wait, to be patient, trust

Elpis - "favorable and confident expectation. a forward look with assurance... Hope is a factor in endurance; it finds it's expression in endurance under trial, which is the effect of waiting for the coming of Christ. It is "an anchor of the soul" staying it amidst the storms of this life... The phrase "full assurance of hope" expresses the completeness of its activity in the soul.

 The other secret to hope is to remember what to place it in... or rather WHOM to place it in. If God is truly the source of all good, then we really risk no disappointment if we put our hope, our confidence, and our trust in Him. Patience and endurance are the tools that help us shove off despair or disappointment. The longer we wait patiently for God to work, the more we will truly see the fruit of what He is doing. Sometimes it takes 40 years in the Wilderness to get to the promised land. So, are you willing to risk it? Are you willing to open up your heart and dream again? Are you willing to hope your longings will be fulfilled? Because when they are... it is a tree of life (the end of Proverbs 13:12)

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—
Emily Dickinson

Should Disappointment, parent of Despair,
Strive for her son to seize my careless heart;
When, like a cloud, he sits upon the air,
Preparing on his spell-bound prey to dart:
Chase him away, sweet Hope, with visage bright,
And fright him as the morning frightens night!
John Keats