Joy For All SeasonsSample

Hope. Where does it come from? Can hope be bought or sold? Can you smell hope? Does it bloom only in the spring? Is there a store that sells hope … a radio station that plays it? I have discovered that hope may be the most valuable intangible that I embrace. If I refuse to hope … I am refusing to believe. I am ignoring an umbrella of faith. Life is hard. Money runs out … bodies betray health … people are difficult … things need fixing. Is “hope” a Pollyanna-like attitude that ignores facts? I have never been very good at ignoring what I see or what I know. Perhaps I need to get over that. Can hope and facts co-exist? Are they compatible or mutually exclusive? This is what I do know … facts don’t tell the end of my story. What I see with my natural eye may be the pretense. What I am unable to see with my eyes may be the solid stuff of life. And so I hope. When my circumstances scream and demand … I choose the quiet whisper of hope. When the facts of my life thunder and quake … I choose the sweet smile of hope. We all choose. We choose hope or despair. Hope or discouragement. Hope or anything. I don’t know what circumstances are shrieking at you today, but if you can choose to hope, you are choosing strength. And joy. And purpose. Perhaps the facts that we face are actually only the fog that surrounds and clouds our view from the truth of hope. Maybe when the cloudiness of human existence lifts, what we will realize is that hope was not ignorance but it was substance and held more truth than the fog. Perhaps what we will know then, that we don’t know now, is that facts mask what is true, real, and genuine. And maybe what I need to remind myself every day is that hope is the foundation of the life that was meant for me. And so I embrace a friendship with hope. I will wrap my mind around all that hope declares and promises. I will speak in hope and think about hope. I will use hope as the anchor of my very fragile soul. Joyful Thought to Ponder: What is a secret of staying in a place of hope?