Hope
Hope
How persevering is your hope?
Hebrews 11:1 “What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us.”
Society is such a poor teacher of this wonderful virtue of hope because it’s filled foreboding, discouragement, despair and apathy. One view of the evening news or the daily paper will tell you that. Things seem so much bigger than us: the war, the gangs, natural disasters, and the peek into the real lives of struggling people on television. What can I do about such enormous problems or messed-up lives?
The medicine for this despair and discouragement is HOPE. We sing that “Our God is an Awesome God.” Do I place my dreams in the biggest “Awesome” in existence? For me, hope in a loving, magnificent God is to my life what baking powder is to biscuits.
Hope is not wishing. Wishing is fantasy. Hope is filled with action. Hope drives us into action because what good would it be to our souls to think that we can wish for the best and it will happen. It takes the act of the will to put all our hope in God. No doubt you have heard: “Act like everything depends on yourself and pray, knowing everything depends on God.” Hope is not like sitting on a soft cushion; it is like sitting on a cactus. It should make us jump up and do something!
Just like despair comes to us from other human beings, hope too, can be given to us by others. Rid yourself of despair because, even if you are only one person, you can make a difference. When the world says, “Give up”, hope says, “Try one more time”. Even in the deepest pit, if one will simply raise one’s eyes, one can see stars. Maybe if we all look up a lot more, we would be surprised by what there is to see.
Everything we do to encourage those around us plants the seeds of hope. If you plant a seed of hope – the flower will be joy. Whether you garden big or in a flower pot, you know the power and promise of hope with every seed you plant. When God is your hope you are always looking for where the Holy Spirit is popping out of the dirt and grime of our human existence.
I am a fisherman (or to be politically correct, a fisherwoman). Thus I believe that the pursuit of the elusive, but obtainable, is the occasion for a series of hope-filled moments. I once read that when a hopeful person goes fishing, they take along tarter sauce!
I quote from the Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teihard de Chardin: “We are one, after all, you and I, together we suffer, together we exist, and forever will we recreate each other.” What Fr. Pierre is telling me is that we walk the path of life together buoying each other up with hope. When the risen Lord shouted to the apostle in the boat, John says to Peter: “It is the Lord.” May I help each of you, and in turn, may you help me to hope that we can recognize Jesus when He speaks; saying to each other, “It is the Lord.”
Submitted by Sr. Angela Murdaugh