When all else fails us, hope persists. It is a silent helper, a secret comforter that abides with us and in us. I have had so many sacred opportunities to look at hope up close in some of the most unlikely places . . . sitting with a dying person; keeping vigil with a grieving family; baptizing a stillborn infant. All the places one would never expect to find hope.
Hope was present with those who needed it most. And in their mourning, God’s glorious hope emerged as a light in the darkness. It wasn’t knowledge or wisdom or strength. It was just hope, and hope was more than enough.
Pamela Hawkins writes about hope in her book, Simply Wait.
Hope opens something in the human heart. Like shutters slowly parting to admit a winter dawn, hope permits strands of light to make their way to us, even when we still stand in cold darkness; but hope also reveals a landscape beyond us into which we can live and move and have our being. With hope, closely held interior thoughts are gently turned outward; deep desires, perhaps long hidden in secret corners of our heart, might be lifted up to the light.
In times of despair, we don’t need answers or solutions. We have only one deep need: just hope. Thanks be to God who graces us with hope.
God of the Sparrow 🌱 By Kathy Manis Findley 